Open access passenger rail services in Central Europe

Zdeněk Tomeš () and Monika Jandová

Research in Transportation Economics, 2018, vol. 72, issue C, 74-81

Abstract: Open access passenger rail services have been well established in Central Europe. They have been in operation in Austria on the Vienna–Salzburg line from 2011, in the Czech Republic on the Prague–Ostrava line from 2011, and in Slovakia on the Žilina–Košice line from 2014. These open access entries are all on principal domestic railway lines and have caused major increases in train frequencies. New entrants have introduced many service innovations and utilized aggressive price cuts. As a result, they have been able to win substantial market shares from incumbents. This article compares the impacts of open access entries on the development of railway markets in Central Europe. The comparison covers entry barriers, business models, market developments, and regulatory challenges. The main results are that open access competition has strongly stimulated ridership, but the impact on market revenues has been only moderate due to price reductions. The total costs on the market went up and both newcomers and incumbents are struggling with the profitability of their open access operations. We conclude that open access passenger rail services in Central Europe have led not only to significant benefits for customers but also cost increases and significant regulatory challenges.

Keywords: Open access competition; Open access operations; Central European railways; Railway regulation; Passenger rail (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L13 L92 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0739885917303190
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:retrec:v:72:y:2018:i:c:p:74-81

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_2&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.retrec.2018.10.002

Access Statistics for this article

Research in Transportation Economics is currently edited by M. Dresner

More articles in Research in Transportation Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().