New Aspects of Socioeconomic Assessment of the Railway Infrastructure Project Life Cycle
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The Authors present the evaluation of impacts in the overall structure of costs regarding the problem of safety and reliability in railway exploitation. The presentation of results is not focused on explaining how this structure changes over the years but presents how to create a useful costs-structure for further analysis.
This is a very important step in their wide research for investment purposes. As the authors claim, the cost structure is necessary for the analysis of railway safety and reliability. In my opinion there is a lack of a relevant introduction regarding how the data will be used for further analysis and what next steps the readers can expect. Without such an introduction, this is only a presentation of a structure of potential costs. I recommend the Authors to describe the results in a wider context of their scientific study.
Author Response
Point-by-point response to the reviewer’s comments is in the uploaded file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper consists of an exercise of quantification of the socio-economic impacts of railway occurrences in the Czech Republic, through the application of a conceptually simple and methodologically straightforward approach. In principle, the paper might be of interest for Applied Sciences and the technical implementation of the paper is correct. However, to this purpose the paper must become something more than a technical report as it appears to be now. In particular, some major issues must be tackled to make the paper of interest for publication.
The paper lacks a proper literature review that allows to place its contribution in context. In the methods section we find something of the kind, but it is unclear to what extent it is a real literature review or just a list of the relevant contributions that have been used to design the paper’s research. A proper literature review entails some organization of the relevant literature in terms of main topics as related to the paper’s research goals and some critical reflection on the state of the art while summarizing a few, main takeaways for the purpose of the study. Neither is easily legible from the paper’s current version.
The paper lacks a proper discussion. The results of the socio-economic impacts of occurrences are calculated, but no reasoning whatsoever is offered as to their size and implications, not to say of possible policy proposals. This is a major gap that needs to be filled in a revised version of the paper. In particular, such discussion cannot be limited to a few vague statements but must elaborate on the implications at a rich enough level to warrant the paper’s interest as a scientific contribution rather than as a technical report. Likewise, the conclusions should consist of something more than a summary of the paper’s main findings, and should discuss the paper’s limitations, the perspectives for future research, and the policy prospects.
A few minor points follow.
The abstract, which is mostly a copy-and-paste of the beginning of the methods section, provides unnecessarily detailed methodological information while failing to convey any real information of the nature and type of results. Please refocus it accordingly.
Throughout the text, it is not necessary to cite extensively titles of papers or names of authors. The number in brackets suffices unless it is of intrinsic importance to explicitly cite either the title of the authors. Please revise accordingly.
The paper needs an accurate further round of editing.
In the last sentence of page 1 (lines 41-43) we find ‘methodical’, ‘methodological? And ‘methodologies’ in the same sentence. Please rephrase.
Line 289: parts of a paper are called ‘sections’, not ‘chapters’, a term that is more appropriate for a book.
Author Response
Point-by-point response to the reviewer’s comments is in the uploaded file.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors,
Thanks very much for your manuscript. I would like to inform you that from my point of view the manuscript could be acceptable for publication, but it needs some improvements. Please find below some remarks from my side.
- Line 158: Impact on health.
- I miss the point 2.2.4: “Calculating the amount of the expected socio-economic impact of occurrences by 146 category per kilometre of track segment and one railway station”.
- Paragraph starting on line 276 must be rewritten to be understood correctly.
- I believe that more updated bibliographic references are needed.
- The conclusions should be related to the final results, and should justify the title of the article "New Aspects". Therefore, conclusions should be reedited.
Thanks and regards,
Author Response
Point-by-point response to the reviewer’s comments is in the uploaded file.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
