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Costs and benefits of the Amsterdam Noord-Zuid underground railway line (Dutch)

KiM, at the request of the Veerman Commission, drafted a report about the costs and benefits of the Noord-Zuid underground railway line in Amsterdam. This report is attached as an annex to the research report of the Veerman Commission (published 2 June 2009), an external board of experts counselling the municipality of Amsterdam as a result of cost overruns and an accumulation of construction risks.

Download "Kosten en baten van de Noord-Zuidlijn | Dutch"

PDF document | 13 pages | 102 kB

Document (research publication) | 10-06-2009 | Peter Bakker, Carl Koopmans, Sytze Rienstra

This report is available in Dutch

KiM’s main conclusions are:

  • a comprehensive Cost-Benefit Analysis was never conducted for this project;
  • the total social benefits of the project are less than the social costs;
  • regarding deliberations about the North/South Line, only future costs and benefits are currently relevant (because investments have already been made and cannot be returned);
  • the actual transport benefits can be significantly lower than in the prior budget;
  • a bonus on the direct effects in order to meet indirect effects on the Amsterdam Noord-Zuid underground railway line will likely be in the middle rather than at the extreme end of the usual 0-30 percent increase