Track wear-and-tear cost by traffic class: Functional form, zero output levels and marginal cost pricing recovery on the French rail network

Marc Gaudry and Emile Quinet
Additional contact information
Marc Gaudry: AJD - Agora Jules Dupuit - UdeM - Université de Montréal, INRETS/DEST - Département Economie et Sociologie des Transports - INRETS - Institut National de Recherche sur les Transports et leur Sécurité
Emile Quinet: PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PJSE - Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

PSE Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: We address the issue of the allocation of railway track maintenance (wear-and-tear) costs to traffic output classes and consider a very general function relating maintenance cost C to a set of technical production characteristics K used to produce traffic output vector T. We neglect other rail cost categories, such as traffic control and track renewal. The data base pertains to over 1500 sections of the French rail infrastructure in 1999, representing about 90% of the total network of 30000 km of lines in regular service. In addition to the maintenance cost C, it provides by track section 15 technical characteristics (both state S and quality Q) and 4 train traffic outputs T. Input prices, assumed to be uniform in space, disappear from the analysis, as in other national cross-sectional cases. With database subsets of approximately 1000 observations, several functional forms are tested: Linear, Log-Log, trans-Log and generalized Box-Cox. All are embedded in an unrestricted extension (U-GBC) of Khaled's seminal restricted generalized Box-Cox (R-GBC) functional specification. The U-GBC architecture, compared with its 4 principal nested variants, turns out to be by far the most appropriate, in particular when some observed zero traffic sample values are included - an issue rather neglected previously in the literature. It appears that several technical characteristics, such as maximum allowed speed and number of switches, are highly significant maintenance cost factors, which gives a hint that derived marginal costs are short term; also, the relation between maintenance costs and traffic is non linear and differs significantly by train category. Implications of different specifications for marginal infrastructure cost charges by traffic type are outlined.

Keywords: rail track wear-and-tear; cost function; CES; trans-Log; generalized Box-Cox; zero sample values; maintenance cost allocation by traffic class; marginal cost by traffic class; power axle weight damage laws; cross-sectional data; rail line sections; France; marginal cost pricing; voie ferrée; entretien; fonction de coût; Box-Cox généralisée; observations nulles; classe de trafic; coût marginal d'entretien par catégorie de trafic; fonction de dommage des charges-essieux; données en coupe instantanée; sections de ligne ferroviaire; tarification au coût marginal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00574977v1
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00574977v1/document (application/pdf)

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:hal:psewpa:halshs-00574977

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in PSE Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().