Organization
The High Speed Line is a project of 'Rijkswaterstaat', a department of the Ministry of Transport and Public Works. The HSL Project Organization delivers a railway line that accommodates high speed trains, it has arranged the railway maintenance for a 25-year period, and, together with the Directorate-General Passenger Transport (DGP), a department of the Ministry of Transport and Public Works, and it made the arrangements for a contract between the Ministry and the operator for the HSL.
A Project Organization is characterised by the fact that the organization (and its staff) is changed, depending on the phase of the project.
Public Private Partnership
The government has entered into a contract for a 25-year period with the construction consortium Infraspeed which is responsible for the design, construction, financing and maintenance of the HSL rail systems. This contract is the largest Public Private Partnership (PPP) contract ever concluded in the Netherlands.
The government has sold the right to make trains run on the HSL to the consortium High Speed Alliance (HSA), in which Dutch Railways (NS) and Royal Dutch Airlines (KLM) are participating. HSA will ne paying the Dutch government for the exclusive right to domestic transport on the high speed line. As of 2008, HSA will be operating domestic and international transport on the HSL for a 15-year period. The contract with HSA as operator is the second largest PPP contract ever concluded in the Netherlands.
In this way, the annual expenses for the availability of the infrastructure, paid to infrastructure provider Infraspeed is compensated by revenues for the government, i.e. the revenues from the transport concession to the operator HSA.