Price basis: 2032 prices
The network is evaluated for 2032. Every figure with a euro sign in the tool — the necessary subsidy, every cost line of the breakdown, the ticket revenue, the fares under Supply — is therefore 2032 money: the source's published price was carried from its own price year to 2032 at a rate set and documented per cost domain. Comparing a figure here with a tariff or a cost you know from today's price lists means comparing across six years of inflation; the "2032 prices" sticker on the headlines is there so that comparison is never made unknowingly.
The conversion happens exactly once, inside each domain's calibration, before a value is seeded into the database. No calculation module ever sees a currency or a price year; the model prices in plain euros of 2032. A scenario for another year would change the target year in the calibration, not the model.
The one exception: rolling stock is bought now
Rolling stock for a 2032 network is contracted in the late 2020s and paid at the contract price. The write-off and financing of the coaches and locomotives therefore run off that historical price, and the model keeps the purchase price at the 2026 contract basis, deliberately not escalated. Carrying it to 2032 as well would count the same inflation twice: once in the contract, once in the model.
Everything else the compositions calibration sets is a recurring rate and follows the 2032 rule — with two conservative-side exceptions noted below.
What is escalated, at which rate
| Domain | Rate to 2032 | Where it is set |
|---|---|---|
| Driver and crew pay, locomotive lease | wage chain (labour) and 2 % a year (lease), from each source's year | rolling stock calibration |
| Track access charges | 3 % a year — the decade's European trend for passenger charges; Slovakia held flat as a documented deviation | track access |
| Traction electricity | 2 % a year | traction electricity |
| Shunting | 2.5 % a year | shunting and stabling |
| Stabling and hotel power | 2 % a year | shunting and stabling |
| Ticket fares and catering | stated directly at the 2032 price year | demand and revenue |
Currency is converted first, at a pinned ECB reference-rate snapshot shared by the calibrations, then the price year is carried forward; both steps are recorded per value in the source registers.
Deliberately not escalated
- Rolling stock purchase price — see above.
- Coach maintenance and cleaning — set at their observed 2026 level. The review showed every real observation below the escalated values, and the model's brief is to be optimistic where the evidence allows.
- Service and stockings (bed linen, breakfast) — kept at source level for the same reason.
- Station charges — carried at the year each price list publishes; their escalation across all countries is planned but not yet applied, so these few euros per call sit a little below 2032 money.
What this means for a reader
Cost and revenue move together, so the necessary subsidy — a difference — is less sensitive to the price year than either side alone. The ratios the tool reports (cost per train-kilometre, revenue per passenger-kilometre, subsidy per tonne of CO₂e) are all 2032 over 2032 and read as such. Only when a single line is set against an outside benchmark does the year matter, and then the benchmark has to be carried to 2032 first — which is how every benchmark in the calibration documents is shown.