Rail Infrastructure Pricing For Intercity Passenger Services In Europe: Possible Impacts On The Railways Competitive Framework

At the beginning of the 90’s, the European Union initiated a railways reform with the aim toface the decline of railway transport, as well as to increase railway competitiveness andinteroperability at European scale. The First Railway Package of this reform focused on thesplit between infrastructure management and operation and, therefore, on the establishment ofpricing systems. Due to lack of straight definition, the application of the Directives oninfrastructure charges in the different European countries has given rise to a large spectrum ofcharging systems. It is a direct consequence of the differences in the charging philosophies(MC –marginal cost, MC+ - marginal cost with mark-ups, FC –Full Cost recovery, etc.), thecharging types (single tariff, two-parts tariff) and the parameters (or variables) chosen fordefining the amount of the charge in each particular case.This paper analyses the rail infrastructure charges in 23 European countries from the point ofview of the parameters used for defining them. The analysis deepens the knowledge ofqualitative differences between these countries’ pricing structure. Furthermore, it analyses itsconsequences in the total amount of the charge to be paid by passenger services runningthrough links considered to be the best national railways relations in each one of the countriesstudied. Concerning the qualitative analysis, forty-six different types of variables wereidentified for the whole of the systems analysed. With regard to the quantitative field,calculations reveal that infrastructure charges range from 14,6 €/train-km to 0,6 €/train-km for“comparable” national links.The last part of this paper discusses the weight of those fares for the use of infrastructure forintercity rail passenger services with regard to its competitor mode. Results from an analysisof 100 national and international links allow drawing some conclusions on the possibleimpacts of railway infrastructure pricing on the railways competitive framework in Europe.