Title: Infrastructure Charging within the French Railways Sector: A New Challenge
Abstract: This paper describes how following the split between transport operation and infrastructure management ten years ago, the French infrastructure manager (RFF) set up a pricing scheme which aimed at covering the operating and maintenance costs of infrastructures. As a result, for the last ten years, the level of rail infrastructure charges has been progressively raised and RFF’s objective has almost been met. Infrastructure charges will soon be on a par with the sum of operating and maintenance costs. Should charges now keep increasing, in order to cover renewal and financial costs as well? Within the railway sector, European Union (EU) directive 2001-14 recommends a short run marginal cost pricing scheme. However the same directive authorises to levy a mark-up, especially when the track is new (less than 15 years old) or if such a mark-up does not have overcrowding effect on the global demand. Owing to the specific situation of the French railway network, in which tremendous imbalances between old and new parts of the network are at stake, the paper seeks to define, for the high speed lines, a mark-up based on the Ramsey-Boiteux principle
Publication Year: 2007
Publication Date: 2007-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 10
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