 Short term adjustments in rail activity: the limited role of infrastructure chargesEmile Quinet Transport Policy, 2003, vol. 10, issue 1, 73-79 Abstract: In many countries and especially in Europe, railway reforms have fragmented the rail industries into one infrastructure manager and several rail operators, and raised new interest in railway short term adjustment, a procedure hitherto run inside the integrated historical operator. Often implicitly, it is assumed that this problem can be solved through the same tool as in road transport, namely through infrastructure charging. The argument presented here is that, due to the differences between road and rail markets, pricing cannot be a proper way to achieve an optimal allocation of rail resources. The right means for that objective should be centralized programming, taking into account various externalities, if information were perfect. Information asymmetry on private values of the services for rail operators can be dealt with through auctions, the results of which are used as input in an optimization procedure led by the regulator. These considerations lead to assess the right role of infrastructure charges in rail, and to draw some conclusions about research fields to explore and means to improve the present practices. Date: 2003 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:trapol:v:10:y:2003:i:1:p:73-79 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Transport Policy is currently edited by Y. Hayashi More articles in Transport Policy from Elsevier |
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