Odolinski, K, Smith, A orcid.org/0000-0003-3668-5593, Wheat, P orcid.org/0000-0003-0659-5052 et al. (2 more authors) (2023) Damage or no damage from traffic: re-examining marginal cost pricing for rail signalling maintenance. Transport Policy, 131. pp. 13-21. ISSN 0967-070X
Abstract
This paper re-examines the implementation of the short run marginal cost (SRMC) pricing principle with respect to rail infrastructure usage and empirically tests if there are rail infrastructure maintenance costs triggered by traffic but not caused by asset damage from traffic. This is important because current EU legislation stipulates that only costs related to infrastructure wear and tear from traffic are eligible for the direct cost-based element of track access charges. An econometric approach is applied to French panel data on signalling maintenance costs. The results show that the SRMC for infrastructure provision of these assets is not only related to asset damage costs caused by traffic, but can also be due to economic factors linked to increased line capacity utilisation: 1) higher cost per maintenance activity, and/or 2) increased preventative maintenance to curb delays. Our work offers an explanation as to why econometric and engineering approaches give different views of rail infrastructure cost variability and suggests that EU legislation on track access pricing may need to be revised.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 The Author(s). This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Marginal cost, Access charging, Econometric methods, Engineering methods, Rail infrastructure, Signalling maintenance |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > Institute for Transport Studies (Leeds) > ITS: Economics and Discrete Choice (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number SNCF - French Railways No External Reference SNCF - French Railways Not Known |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 06 Dec 2022 15:32 |
Last Modified: | 04 Dec 2023 04:30 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.tranpol.2022.11.013 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:193668 |