Railway line capacity utilisation and its impact on maintenance costs

Kristofer Odolinski () and Hans E. Boysen
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Kristofer Odolinski: CTS - Centre for Transport Studies Stockholm (KTH and VTI), Postal: Centrum för Transportstudier (CTS), Teknikringen 10, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
Hans E. Boysen: CTS - Centre for Transport Studies Stockholm (KTH and VTI), Postal: Centrum för Transportstudier (CTS), Teknikringen 10, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden

No 2018:10, Working papers in Transport Economics from CTS - Centre for Transport Studies Stockholm (KTH and VTI)

Abstract: In this paper, we analyse how railway maintenance costs are affected by different levels of railway line capacity utilisation. Previous studies have focused on the wear and tear of the infrastructure, while this paper shows that it is important to also acknowledge the heterogeneity of the maintenance production environment. Specifically, we estimate marginal maintenance costs for traffic using econometric methods on a panel dataset from Sweden and show that these costs increase with line capacity utilisation. The results are significant considering that current EU regulation (2015/909) states that track access charges can be based on marginal costs, with the aim of achieving an efficient use of available infrastructure capacity.

Keywords: maintenance; marginal cost; rail infrastructure; capacity; track access charges (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L92 R48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 12 pages
Date: 2018-05-30, Revised 2018-10-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-reg, nep-tre and nep-ure
Note: Published in Journal of Rail Transport Planning & Management, Volume 9, May 2019, Pages 22-33.
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:ctswps:2018_010

DOI: 10.1016/j.jrtpm.2018.12.001

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