European Railway Comparisons – Company Profiles

This work was undertaken as part of a project sponsored by the British Railways Board entitled `European Railway Comparisons'. The aims of this project are as follows:

(i)To compare the current efficiency of European railway operators and examine recent trends at both aggregate and disaggregate levels.

(ii)To assess the effects of economies of scale and economies of density on European rail operations.

(iii)To make an exploratory assessment of the potential for further disaggregation by market type (InterCity, Commuter, Freight) in order to make detailed comparisons of market shares.

The main methods employed to carry out this study are as follows:

(i)A review of the literature on railway cost and productivity analysis. Preliminary findings are given in Working Paper 354 and a paper presented to the World Conference on Transport Research (Nash, C.A. and Preston, J.M. (1992) "Assessing the Performance of European Railways").

(ii)Collation of published data for 13 European State Railway Operators.

(iii)Face to face interviews with managers at the 13 State Railway companies in order to check our understanding of published data sources, gain more infomation at a disaggregate level (administered by a self completion questionnaire) and obtain an understanding of the institutional background.

This report summarises some of the background information that was obtained from the interviews undertaken in the summer of 1992. A company profile is developed for each operator under four main headings: Objectives and Management, Finance, the Freight Market and the Passenger Market.