Calculation Scheme

In a business analysis, not only the costs but also the potential benefits in terms of traffic flows and transport volumes at system borders are useful factors. Task 3 involved determining the potential traffic and transport volumes at the system interfaces for goods trains and passenger trains and conducting an economic feasibility assessment on the basis of this data for different types of services and for various freight and traffic volumes. The factors relevant to cost-effectiveness, such as market conditions, investments, tariffs, vehicles/facilities, etc. were taken into account. This produced a set of conclusions on the cost-effectiveness of a gauge changeover system, which also take into account traffic volumes expected in the future in and beyond the European area. In addition, potential clients for automatic gauge changeover systems are given the possibility in accordance with their specific needs of establishing a rough estimate of cost-effectiveness based on an example by means of a simple computational programme. Thus a calculator for assessing individual transports has been developed (one for freight transport and one for passenger transport. This allows for a more precise parameterisation of potential transports. While some parameters of the model are fixed, the user can specify the majority of values by selecting from a broad range of predefined parameters or can freely choose new values in order to tailor the model characteristics to their individual need.