Helsinki Workshop on Infrastructure Charging on Railways 31 July - 1 August, 2000

Chris Nash and Esko Niskanen

No 245, Discussion Papers from VATT Institute for Economic Research

Abstract: Whilst there is a long tradition of economic analysis of charging for the use of road infrastructure, the situation relating to rail is quite different. In most cases until recently railways have been integrated organisations with the same body responsible for infrastructure and operations. Rail infrastructure charging, if practised at all, has therefore been largely an internal transfer within the organisation. The principal exception to this has been the presence of access rights by one company over infrastructure owned by another in the case of North America. But the dominance of integrated national rail companies in Europe, and the fact that international traffic was operated by cooperation between the national railways rather than by one railway operating over the tracks of another, made the issue of no relevance here. The change in this situation started with the separation of infrastructure from operations in Sweden, which was undertaken with the aim of putting rail infrastructure on an equivalent footing to road. Later on the European Commission began pushing for separation of infrastructure from operations in order to encourage new entry and to promote competition between different rail companies.

Keywords: Infrastructure charging, infrastructure financing, competition, market structure, railways, Economic growth, Taloudellinen kasvu, International comparisons, Kansainväliset vertailut, Transport, Liikenne, Labor market and policies promoting economic growth, Työmarkkinat ja kasvua tukeva politiikka, F000 - International Economics: General, H540 - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies: Infrastructures; Other Public Investment and Capital Stock, L920 - Railroads and Other Surface Transportation: Autos, Buses, Trucks, and Water Carriers; Ports (trains, boats, ships, ocean liners, etc.), O100 - Economic Development: General, R400 - Transportation Systems: General, (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.doria.fi/handle/10024/148145

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:fer:dpaper:245

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from VATT Institute for Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Anita Niskanen ().