Estimating Marginal Costs for the Austrian Railway System

This article presents an econometric analysis of the maintenance costs for the Austrian railway system. The data contain observations of track maintenance costs from 1998 to 2000. Our analysis identifies the cost driving factors in order to determine estimates of marginal costs, as required by the infrastructure provision principles of the European Union. The analysis identifies the variables "track length" and "transported gross-tons" as the principal cost determinants. Furthermore, we observe that total costs as well as marginal costs increase with (i) a high proportion of the track occupied by train stations, (ii) the number of switches within a track, (iii) narrow bends, and (iv) considerable slopes. Moreover average as well as marginal costs for secondary lines are significantly higher than for main lines.