High-speed railway in developing countries: mind the gap -lessons from Morocco-

ABSTRACT

Conducted prior to the launch of the High-Speed Railway (HSR) in Morocco, this study aims to be the first research to assess the HSR project through the estimation of the value of travel time savings. We focused on inter-urban routes to assess the HSR project impact. We conducted a Discrete Choice Experiment in the cities impacted (directly or indirectly) by the HSR project, which are Tangier, Kenitra, Rabat, Casablanca and Marrakesh. Our results show that at the sample average points of each mode of transport, the values of travel time savings are approximately 94MAD/h for car users, 27MAD/h for train users and 25MAD/h for bus users. We performed a simulation for the Tangier-Casablanca route and obtained satisfactory results (93MAD/h, 26MAD/h and 24MAD/h, for private car, train, and bus journeys respectively). Finally, our results show that the pricing strategies of the national railway operator (Office National des Chemins de Fer) present a potential risk of eviction, which could counterbalance the positive impact of the time savings.

KEYWORDS:

• Value of travel time savings
• developing countries
• high-speed rail
• social profitability
• inclusive mobility

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• O22
• R41
• R42
• D00

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the CEE-M. The support provided by CEE-M were invaluable in conducting the research.

Disclosure statement

In accordance with Taylor & Francis policy and our ethical obligation as a researchers, we are reporting that we have no competing interest.

Statement of informed consent

CEE-M’s internal ethics committee waived the need for consent for the collection, because the voluntary aspect of the survey method (face to face), and the inability to identify participants after the survey is completed.

Ethical approval

This study was approved by the CEE-M’s (Center for Environmental Economics-Montpellier) internal ethics committee.

Notes

¹ The International Monetary Fund (IMF) categorizes its member countries into two distinct groups: advanced economies and emerging and developing countries (International Monetary Fund 2023). This classification hinges on several factors, such as per capita income, export diversification, and integration within the global financial system. Among the IMF’s roster, 41 of the most robust economies are designated as advanced, while the remaining 155 countries fall under the classification of emerging and developing economies. Within this latter grouping, those countries with high income levels are further identified as emerging markets (Duttagupta and Pazarbasioglu 2021).

² ONCF is Morocco’s national railway operator.

³ The Human Development Index is a composite index estimated by the United Nations for Development Program. It measures the average achievement in three basic dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent standard of living (United Nations for Development Programme 2023).

⁴ These opinions were expressed by the economist Fouad Abdelmoumni in 2011. In fact, Morocco was ranked 131st in human development, by the United Nation Development Program, while Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt were ranked 39th, 34th, 110th and 113th respectively.

⁵ In 2012, a group of associations (CAPDEMA, ATTAC, Transparency Maroc, etc.) created a coalition to manifest against the HSR project.

⁶ The Arab Spring was a chain of protest movements that began in Tunisia and spread across the Arabic-speaking countries, in 2011.

⁷ A protocol was signed in 2010, to allocate MAD550 billion (€500 million) to the HSR project. Adding the funding received from Morocco’s economic partners, the total project’s cost was initially estimated at approximately MAD20 billion (€1.8 billion). The final cost was higher, as is often the case for HSR worldwide. It reached €2.2 billion (Berrada 2018). This situation required more fund raising in 2013, as well as financing by the Islamic Development Bank in 2016.

⁸ The Moroccan HSR project was part of the program contract 2010–2015 concluded between Moroccan State and ONCF for a total investment of MAD33 billion (€3 billion) (Office National des Chemins de Fer 2014).

⁹ We are aware that other factors can influence mode choice: flexibility, reliability, safety, etc. We limited ourselves to dimensions that are easily quantifiable and directly observable.

¹⁰ The prices here were estimated based on 3MAD/km as per the Tax Circular 16/2017.

¹¹ We are interested in this route, even though this section will not be part of the HSR project. since the ONCF launched a new offer with regular trains named ATLAS as an extension to the HSR offer.

¹² Tangier holds Tanger-Med port, which is the largest port in Africa. It is known for its industrial activities. Casablanca, the economic capital, is the largest city in Morocco. The Casablanca-Settat region contributed $32\mathrm{\%}$ to the Moroccan Gross Domestic Product in 2016, according to the Haut Commissariat au Plan (HCP), an independent government statistical institution. Kenitra is a rising city that has the Atlantic free zone, the largest in Africa. Rabat, the capital city of Morocco, is the second largest city in Morocco. It gathers all the public departments which reinforce commerce and services activities.

¹³ According to HCP, in 2014, almost a third of the Moroccan population was illiterate. In 2015, 34.6% of the adult population (over 15 years old) had no instruction level, 38.7% had a fundamental level (primary and middle school), 14.6% had a high school level, and only 8.6% completed higher degrees (including high school diploma) (Haut Commissariat au Plan 2017).

¹⁴ Collective taxis are private operators that provide a collective passenger transport service and are authorized for inter-city routes.

¹⁵ We assume that collective taxi is mainly used to travel between nearby cities, and is thus not within the scope of our study. Our objective is to estimate the VTTS for a region perfectly served by the transport networks of the three modes studied; proposing multimodality in the choice experiment was considered irrelevant to the matter at hand.

¹⁶ We collected the prices and the travel times, for train from the official ONCF’s selling platform: www.oncf-voyages.ma. For bus, we questioned three websites: www.markoub.ma., www.lagare.ma. and www.ctm.ma. For the private car, we used www.maps.google.com for travel time, and estimated travel cost based on the Tax Circular 16/2017.

¹⁷ Orthogonal designs are settings wherein the columns display zero correlations. Each column acts independently, thereby enabling the removal of some columns without affecting the orthogonality.

¹⁸ According to the Haut Commissariat au Plan (2018) the car ownership rate per household was 14% in 2015. Therefore, it is important to propose different choices sets for car owners and non-car owners, to confront the respondents with a realistic situation.

¹⁹ CTM is the pioneering company of passenger road transport in Morocco. It provides the best quality services of the entire sector and mainly competes with ONCF on long distances.

²⁰ Intercity transport facilities in Morocco are located in the centre of the cities, close to each other.

²¹ The results of the population census of 2014 show that, if we consider only population over 18 years old, 47% of Moroccans are aged between 15 and 35 years, 44% between 35 and 60 years, and 8% over 60 years. The data can be found on the website www.rgphentableaux.hcp.ma/Default1/.

²² It should be pointed out that for a logistic model McFadden $R^2$ is always notably lower than that of least squared regression. Indeed, if its value is over $0.20$, the model is considered an excellent fit (McFadden 1977). In our case, McFadden $R^2$ (0.16) is acceptable.

²³ Proportion Predict with Success represents the percentage of correct predicted choices. It allows assessing the goodness of fit of the model.

²⁴ We chose Tangier-Casablanca route because these are the cities primarily served by the HSR.

²⁵ This is in line with Karmarkar, Jana, and Velaga (2023)‘s conclusion, that vulnerable individuals are less inclined to pay to save time.

²⁶ For the routes from Tangier to Casablanca, we used HSR travel times. For Casablanca-Marrakesh, we used a combination of HSR and the new line travel times.

²⁷ The price used is a mean of second-class fares, proposed on the ONCF website.

²⁸ Calculation of the authors based on International Union of Railways database Railisa and the annual report of ONCF 2022.

Additional information

Funding

No funding was received.