Costs and Benefits of Railway Urban Logistics

This chapter presents a general framework to assess urban rail logistics suitability via a socio-economic cost-benefit analysis, also called social cost-benefit analysis (SCBA). First, the author proposes an overview on the basic notions of SCBA starting from those of classical cost-benefit analysis (CBA) then identifies and presents the main types of costs and benefits of railway urban logistics services and the related final delivery services associated to them using low emission road vehicles to serve final customers from the railway stops. After that, the main modelling issues needed for SCBA assessment are presented. Finally, as an example of application, the author proposes to assess a scenario of deployment of a freight tramway in Paris, in a possible configuration. The results show the potential of those approaches but also show that it is important to contextualize them and inform the different users about their real capabilities.