As part of the UIC Alliance of Universities for High-Speed Rail (AUHSR), a global academic network established in 2015 for the development of high-speed rail, the 6th International Symposium on High-Speed Rail Socioeconomic Impacts was held successfully online on 8 and 9 September 2026. Over two days, there were more than 100 participants from across the sector, including researchers, railway representatives, infrastructure managers, operators, and high-level institutions from around the world.
Six editions in, the symposium has become the reference forum for discussing the question preceding any other high-speed rail debate. Financing structures, governance models, network design and operational choices all depend on answering the question: what high-speed rail investment actually delivers to the economy and to society. Assessing this impact in depth is what makes everything that follows possible; and this is precisely the ground the alliance has been building, year after year, with a research community that keeps expanding.
The symposium opened with remarks delivered by leading figures from the academic, institutional, and railway sectors:
- Moderator: Prof Francesca Pagliara - Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, University of Naples Federico II, Italy
- Prof Francesco Pirozzi - Head of the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, University of Naples Federico II, Italy
- Prof Valeria Costantino - Rector’s Delegate for Erasmus+, University of Naples Federico II, Italy
- Bertrand Minary - UIC Director of the Freight and Passenger Departments, Coordinator of the Middle East and Latin American Regions
- Michele Gesualdi - UIC Senior Advisor for High-Speed Rail
- Alberto Mazzola - Executive Director, Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER)
- Graham Nelmes - Executive General Manager, Customer, Operations and Place, High Speed Rail Authority, Australia
A distinctive feature of this edition was three keynote speeches being held, each with a different socioeconomic perspective regarding high-speed rail. Prof Erik Verhoef (VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands) examined the impact of HSR investment through a spatial general equilibrium perspective. Prof Anthony Perl (Simon Fraser University, Canada) explored how the urban effect observed in China might applied to the Californian context. Prof Roger Vickerman (Imperial College London and University of Kent, United Kingdom) addressed high-speed rail and international traffic in Europe, putting long-standing aspirations back on track.
The programme was composed of seven sessions spread over two days, gathering thirty paper presentations from institutions in 19 countries across Europe, Asia, North America, Africa, Oceania and the Middle East.
The first day was devoted to high-speed rail and investment, with three consecutive sessions covering financing and governance models for mainline HSR in Asia and their implications for emerging economies, yield management and pricing, six decades of operational experience worldwide, passenger time costs, environmental mediation effects, reliability valuation, demand thresholds and social profitability, and the design of services as a determiner of the sustainability of the investment itself.
The second day turned to land-use impacts across three further sessions, examining station area development in urban China and internationally, the integration of HSR with other transport systems, property and housing market dynamics through machine learning approaches, catchment areas measured with mobile phone big data, accessibility in European intermediate territories, and the spatial reallocation of firms. A final session was dedicated to competition, with contributions on liberalisation and mode of transports choices, revenue management in competitive markets, and the interaction between high-speed rail and air transport in several different national contexts.
Two “Best Paper” awards were assigned during the symposium. The first, sponsored by the Asian Development Bank Institute, and the second, sponsored by the Italian Society of Transport Economics and Logistics.
The symposium was organised by Prof Pagliara, recently appointed Vice-Chair of the UIC AUHSR, who has chaired and developed this initiative since its first edition. Prof. Pagliara also closed the event, thanking the authors, chairs, and participants, and confirmed that the initiative would continue, with UIC’s support and annual organisation by the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering (DICEA), University of Naples Federico II.
Each edition, the range of topics continues to expand, and the geographical reach of the contributions continues to widen. This is a clear signal that High-Speed Rail remains a priority for rail authorities, industry leaders and academic institutions alike, and that the commitment to measuring its real benefits for economies and societies is stronger than ever.
For more information on obtaining AUHSR membership, please visit: https://uic.org/events/auhsr-membership-application.
