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Maintenance costs of high-speed lines in Europe—a subject rarely addressed in technical literature—are analyzed. The design characteristics of each line and of the traffic supported by these lines are discussed. A new classification specific for these types of lines is proposed to study the deterioration of various elements and the cost for conservation. This classification is based on the typology of the rolling stock instead of the product that it transports (passengers or freight). The structures adopted by the infrastructure managers to carry out the maintenance operations are also discussed. Moreover, numerical specific data on the maintenance cost of a kilometer of track per year, for a line on which only high-speed trains circulate, are presented. The influence of mixed traffic is analyzed, and the economical costs for the maintenance required for these lines are also quantified.

This paper analyses the deterioration process in track geometric quality on the Madrid-Seville high-speed line, during its first ten years of commercial operation. Both the maintenance operations carried out in this period as well as all the dynamic inspection records available have been analysed. In the latter case, vertical and transversal accelerations measured on axle boxes, bogies, and vehicle bodies of Spanish high-speed trains (AVE) have been considered. The discretization of the line throughout its total extension (471 km) into 10 m long sections has made it possible to find out and quantify the relative influence of track infrastructure (tunnels, viaducts, natural subgrade, embankments, etc) on geometric track quality deterioration. The effect of switches and expansion devices in this deterioration process has also been studied.

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