Dynamics in rail infrastructure provision: maintenance and renewal costs in Sweden

Kristofer Odolinski () and Phillip Wheat
Additional contact information
Kristofer Odolinski: VTI, Postal: Centrum för Transportstudier (CTS), Teknikringen 10, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
Phillip Wheat: Institute for Transport Studies (ITS), University of Leeds, Postal: Centrum för Transportstudier (CTS), Teknikringen 10, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden, https://www.its.leeds.ac.uk/people/p.wheat

No 2016:23, Working papers in Transport Economics from CTS - Centre for Transport Studies Stockholm (KTH and VTI)

Abstract: In this paper, we extend to the literature on marginal wear and tear cost estimation in railways, by applying a panel vector autoregressive model to rail infrastructure renewals and maintenance costs, using an extensive dataset from Sweden. This study is significant given the inherent difficulties in modelling the substantial renewals element of infrastructure costs, as well as the need to account for the dynamics in renewals and maintenance. The dynamic model allows us to estimate equilibrium cost elasticities with respect to train usage, which are significantly larger than their static counterparts. Overall, this work highlights that dynamics in rail infrastructure costs are important to consider when setting track access charges with respect to the wear and tear caused by traffic. This is particularly important given several countries, for example France, Sweden and Switzerland, are now setting access charges at marginal costs based on econometric studies.

Keywords: Rail infrastructure; Renewal; Maintenance; Panel vector autoregression; Marginal cost; Impulse response analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L92 R48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 10 pages
Date: 2016-11-25, Revised 2017-12-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-reg, nep-tre and nep-ure
Note: Published in Economics of Transportation, Volume 14, June 2018, Pages 21-30.
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecotra.2018.01.001 Full text (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:hhs:ctswps:2016_023

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecotra.2018.01.001

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working papers in Transport Economics from CTS - Centre for Transport Studies Stockholm (KTH and VTI) Centrum för Transportstudier (CTS), Teknikringen 10, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CTS ().