Infracharges - UIC Study on railway infrastructure charges in Europe

The purpose of this study is to assess the state of Rail Infrastructure Pricing in Europe. Over the past two decades, the railway sector in Europe has been going through a reform. During this period, the sector’s structure has changed immensely. Infrastructure management has been separated from train operations to promote better management and increase competition. This study provides an overview of the status quo in the industry and goes into some detail regarding the history and evolution of tariff systems. The study performs a quantitative evaluation by calculating tariffs for a number of Origin-Destination pairs. Next, Railway Undertakings’ per-train income is estimated and compared to the IM fee. Finally on the quantitative side, IM revenues are compared on a per-line basis with initial investment costs for selected European high-speed lines. In the next section, European tariff systems are compared to tariff systems elsewhere in the world, and Japanese and North American tariff systems are presented. Finally, a list of open unanswered questions for the industry is presented and future pricing tendencies are analyzed and evaluated.