However, since the government does not take into account the
impact of the timetables in the appraisal, the operators have both
incentive and opportunity to act strategically when stating their
intended timetables, which are inputs to the appraisal. Since the
consumer surplus and the producer surplus both increase when
the investment is built, the operators support the capacity investment and have incentives to increase the CBA benefits, increasing the probability that the government decides to build the
investment.
The operators know which timetable gives the maximal social
welfare in the investment scenario (3 regional and 5 long-distance
trains), so they can act strategically by stating that they intend to
run this number of trains if the investment is built. This yields a
benefit of 163 kSEK/h (second row of Table 3), almost twice the
benefit of the actual outcome. In the investment scenario the
timetable maximizes the social welfare, but in the do-nothing
scenario the train frequency is higher than optimal.
The operators can also act strategically by stating (truthfully)
their intentions to run 6 regional trains/h and 5 long-distance
trains/h with the investment. However, they state that they also
intend to run this timetable even if the investment is not built.
Then the benefit would increase further to 306 kSEK/h.