Evaluating the roles and powers of rail regulatory bodies in Europe: A survey-based approach

Valerio Benedetto, Andrew S.J. Smith and Chris A. Nash

Transport Policy, 2017, vol. 59, issue C, 116-123

Abstract: European railways have been shaped by multiple reforms since the mid-1990s, covering industry structure, market opening and economic regulation. However, the literature has given little attention to the latter; namely the evolution and impacts of regulatory reforms amongst Europe's railways. This paper fills this gap by providing an up-to-date, bottom-up assessment of current rail regulatory practice in Europe. We develop a survey of economic regulators across Europe, thus complementing top-down studies of the impact of economic regulation by enabling a richer insight into regulatory activity and its impacts. The questionnaire is based on a review of the literature on ideal regulatory characteristics across multiple industries. Our results show that European rail regulators, in general, exhibit many of the features of ideal regulation; in particular around key features such as independence, resourcing, longevity and expertise, transparency and in turn stability and predictability. However, we find that rail regulatory bodies could take a more proactive role in shaping track access charges, given their importance in respect of efficient use of the network and maintaining non-discriminatory access. Importantly, there is also scope for regulators to play a greater role in regulating the efficiency and quality of infrastructure managers, and potentially becoming more involved in the designing stages of passenger market opening as it emerges; and these changes could deliver substantial beneficial impacts for rail users and funders across Europe.

Keywords: Regulation; Railways; Competition; Cost; Structure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967070X16304966
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:trapol:v:59:y:2017:i:c:p:116-123

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.tranpol.2017.07.003

Access Statistics for this article

Transport Policy is currently edited by Y. Hayashi

More articles in Transport Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().