This report was sponsored by the Union of African Railways, as part of a Sub-Saharan Africa Transport Project task aimed at defining what is involved in restructuring railways so that they behave more like market driven enterprises. The question addressed in this document is not whether the...

In May 1992, the World Bank hosted a Railway Rountable in Vienna, Austria, attended by transport ministers, advisors, and senior railway staff from the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. The Roundtable reviewed recent trends in the railways'roles in these countries and identified...

Decisions about investments in the long-lived assets of transport infrastructure require some assumptions about prospective long-term demand from services using that infrastructure. To improve the basis for such predictions, the authors estimated the long-run determinants of domestic freight...

In many countries the mismatch between what the railways offer and what the customers want has caused significant economic inefficiency and severe financial strains for the railways and their government owners. The concept of the railway as a monolithic entity is so strong in many countries as...