Railway reforms are rooted in the growth of competition from trucks, autos, barges and airlines. One of the first great national railway crises was the collapse of the Penn Central railroad in the U.S. in the early 1970s. There were... more
Railway reforms are rooted in the growth of competition from trucks, autos, barges and airlines. One of the first great national railway crises was the collapse of the Penn Central railroad in the U.S. in the early 1970s. There were subsequent financial train wrecks in Japan, Germany, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil and Poland, all of which eventually forced changes. Most of the significant reform efforts began in a financial crisis which threatened either shutdown or at least significant harm to the railway. Governments also discovered that railways in financial crisis invariably offer poor service. Whether weak cash flow causes, or results from, poor service may be debatable, but that they occur together is not.
Le role du regime de propriete des chemins de fer est un sujet tres controverse. Comme n’importe quel autre mode de transport, les chemins de fer constituent un ensemble d’actifs exploites par un groupe de personnes assurant un service... more
Le role du regime de propriete des chemins de fer est un sujet tres controverse. Comme n’importe quel autre mode de transport, les chemins de fer constituent un ensemble d’actifs exploites par un groupe de personnes assurant un service qui correspond lui-meme a une demande induite. La question de savoir qui possede et gere quoi a cependant donne lieu a des reponses tres differentes selon les pays et les circonstances. De fait, la reponse a cette question dans un pays donne est souvent changeante et evolue en fonction de la situation et de la politique du moment.
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The International Transport Forum is a global platform and meeting place at the highest level for transport, logistics and mobility. Key figures from government and politics, business and industry, research and civil society will meet in... more
The International Transport Forum is a global platform and meeting place at the highest level for transport, logistics and mobility. Key figures from government and politics, business and industry, research and civil society will meet in Leipzig each year to debate a transport topic of worldwide strategic importance.
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This study explores options for the restructuring and the privatization of PKS, Poland's main state-owned enterprise for road transport of passengers and general freight. In the discussion of privatization, the focus of the study is... more
This study explores options for the restructuring and the privatization of PKS, Poland's main state-owned enterprise for road transport of passengers and general freight. In the discussion of privatization, the focus of the study is on the road freight haulage operations of PKS and not on its passenger operations by bus. Privatization of road haulage, in conformity with the stated purposes of Poland's program of systemic reform, is intended to raise the productivity of resources employed in transport and to assist thereby in the recovery of the economy and of employment. The key to this outcome is the creation of a competitive environment and, equally, the introduction of management by, or under the control of, owners with a clear right to the net income from the business. The process of privatization must therefore allow wide scope for the development of commercially alert and market-oriented management. If privatization of road haulage is to serve those ends and also confo...
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Rail passenger services in the U.S. have a distinct structure that evolved over many years. Railroads in the U.S. – freight and passengers – developed entirely in the private sector. In the latter part of the 19 century, railroads... more
Rail passenger services in the U.S. have a distinct structure that evolved over many years. Railroads in the U.S. – freight and passengers – developed entirely in the private sector. In the latter part of the 19 century, railroads occupied a dominant position in the transport sector. This dominance, combined with the notorious image of the “robber barons”(many of whom were railroad investors who fully deserved their bad reputation), fixed in place a U.S. approach relying on private ownership and operation, but constrained by strong government regulation.
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The Database contains farebox receipts for freight and passenger services, and passenger-km (p-km) and freight tonne-km (t-km). We start therefore from estimates of national currency average passenger revenue (fare) per p-km and average... more
The Database contains farebox receipts for freight and passenger services, and passenger-km (p-km) and freight tonne-km (t-km). We start therefore from estimates of national currency average passenger revenue (fare) per p-km and average freight revenue (tariff) per t-km. We emphasize "farebox" because subsidies paid by governments are sometimes left out of "revenues". We have "included Public Service Obligation (PSO) payments where possible, but this information is sometimes either not available or not sufficiently precise to be usable. Passenger revenues for some of the developed railways in the list may therefore be understated for this reason. In fact, few developing countries make PSO payments at all, so the potential distortion is not so large for them.
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This report identifies planning process options, funding challenges, and potential actions to improve integration of rail services with airports, particularly in congested corridors. The report identifies the challenges involved in a... more
This report identifies planning process options, funding challenges, and potential actions to improve integration of rail services with airports, particularly in congested corridors. The report identifies the challenges involved in a variety of institutional settings in different regions and develops ways to better integrate inter-agency planning processes. It identifies specific site planning and service coordination actions to promote air rail transfers, defines the data and analysis capabilities needed to determine the feasibility and effectiveness of improved integration of air and rail services, and demonstrates the application of methods and tools to support integrated planning for air and rail services and decision making. Key issues covered include rail and air in a competitive and complimentary mode. The report has an accompanying CD-ROM (CRP-CD-157) that includes an Air/Rail Diversion model, a sketch planning tool capable of supporting the evaluation of a range of policy actions that affect choice of air or rail for long distance travel. A User Guide provides direction in applying the model to evaluate different scenarios and a Technical Appendix provides supplemental information for the model. The report and accompanying tool will be of interest to airport and rail operators, state and regional transportation planners, and other interested stakeholders.
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Research Interests: Engineering, Construction, Transportation, Cars, Transport, and 7 moreTopography, Range, Income, Diesel, Route, Trains, and Database
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The International Transport Forum is a global platform and meeting place at the highest level for transport, logistics and mobility. Key figures from government and politics, business and industry, research and civil society will meet in... more
The International Transport Forum is a global platform and meeting place at the highest level for transport, logistics and mobility. Key figures from government and politics, business and industry, research and civil society will meet in Leipzig each year to debate a transport topic of worldwide strategic importance. This document was produced as background for the 2009 International
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The International Transport Forum is a strategic think tank for the transport sector. Each year, it brings together Ministers from over 50 Countries, along with leading decision-makers and thinkers from the private sector, civil society... more
The International Transport Forum is a strategic think tank for the transport sector. Each year, it brings together Ministers from over 50 Countries, along with leading decision-makers and thinkers from the private sector, civil society and research, to address transport issues of strategic importance. An intergovernmental organisation within the OECD, the Forum's goal is to shape the transport policy agenda, and ensure that it contributes to economic growth, environmental protection, social inclusion and the preservation of human life and wellbeing.
Many railway activities traditionally reserved for monolithic public railways can be performed more effectively by the private sector. During the 1980s, the large budgetary demands and failure to achieve improved performance led many... more
Many railway activities traditionally reserved for monolithic public railways can be performed more effectively by the private sector. During the 1980s, the large budgetary demands and failure to achieve improved performance led many governments to consider privatization or, more appropriately, an increase in the role of the private sector and enhanced competition in railways. This note discusses the use of different institutional arrangements to facilitate private participation in rail activities.
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The International Transport Forum at the OECD is an intergovernmental organisation with 54 member countries. It acts as a strategic think-tank, with the objective of helping shape the transport policy agenda on a global level and ensuring... more
The International Transport Forum at the OECD is an intergovernmental organisation with 54 member countries. It acts as a strategic think-tank, with the objective of helping shape the transport policy agenda on a global level and ensuring that it contributes to economic growth, environmental protection, social inclusion and the preservation of human life and well-being. The International Transport Forum organises an annual summit of Ministers along with leading
As experience grew, the Bank developed three agencies, depending on the wealth of the client country and the nature of the investment. The original International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) focuses on developing... more
As experience grew, the Bank developed three agencies, depending on the wealth of the client country and the nature of the investment. The original International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) focuses on developing countries with higher levels of income per capita (most of Latin America and Eastern Europe, for example). The International Development Association (IDA) deals with the poorer countries (most of Africa and South Asia). The International Finance Corporation (IFC) invests along with the private sector in all countries.
4 The International Transport Forum is a strategic think tank for the transport sector. Each year, it brings together Ministers from over 50 Countries, along with leading decision-makers and thinkers from the private sector, civil society... more
4 The International Transport Forum is a strategic think tank for the transport sector. Each year, it brings together Ministers from over 50 Countries, along with leading decision-makers and thinkers from the private sector, civil society and research, to address transport issues of strategic importance. An intergovernmental organisation within the OECD, the Forum's goal is to shape the transport policy agenda, and ensure that it contributes to economic growth, environmental protection, social inclusion and the preservation of human life and wellbeing. The views expressed here are those of the authors, and should not be interpreted to represent those of the International Transport Forum or its Members.
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Rail infrastructure serves freight and passenger operators. This chapter focuses on rail freight operations and infrastructure needs and examines the underlying economic and demographic forces which are creating growth pressures. What is... more
Rail infrastructure serves freight and passenger operators. This chapter focuses on rail freight operations and infrastructure needs and examines the underlying economic and demographic forces which are creating growth pressures. What is the future demand for rail freight and how will demand be met by the public and private sectors? As this chapter discusses, management models and government policies vary greatly.
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Research Interests: Business, Service Quality, Transportation, Safety, Transport, and 15 moreAir, Rate of return, Framework, Income, Sharing, Ports, Deregulation, Trucks, True, Private Sector, Route, Gasoline, Commodity, Carriage, and variable cost
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Transport is a derived demand: that is, the use of transport is determined by economic and social forces external to transport. Demand for transport is related to costs, including labor, investment and energy, and to service quality... more
Transport is a derived demand: that is, the use of transport is determined by economic and social forces external to transport. Demand for transport is related to costs, including labor, investment and energy, and to service quality (frequency, speed, reliability). Energy use in transport (the prime determinant of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions) is often only a minor percentage of total
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Les infrastructures ferroviaires servent a deux categories d’operateurs (marchandises et voyageurs). Le present chapitre traite principalement du trafic marchandises des chemins de fer et de ses besoins en infrastructures, et etudie les... more
Les infrastructures ferroviaires servent a deux categories d’operateurs (marchandises et voyageurs). Le present chapitre traite principalement du trafic marchandises des chemins de fer et de ses besoins en infrastructures, et etudie les forces economiques et demographiques sous-jacentes qui amplifient ces derniers. Quelle sera la demande future d’infrastructures ferroviaires dediees au trafic marchandises et comment les secteurs public et prive pourront-ils satisfaire cette demande? Comme le montre ce chapitre, les modeles de gestion et les politiques publiques adoptees varient sensiblement.
Les experts en transports semblent avoir une tendance irrepressible a se focaliser sur « leur »partie du systeme de production en renoncant a aborder les transports du point de vue du client, asavoir le chargeur ou le destinataire, et en... more
Les experts en transports semblent avoir une tendance irrepressible a se focaliser sur « leur »partie du systeme de production en renoncant a aborder les transports du point de vue du client, asavoir le chargeur ou le destinataire, et en viennent ainsi souvent a se braquer sur l’une ou l’autreinnovation technologique ou sur un seul mode. La course a l’efficience ou aux economies d’echelletend alors a occuper le devant de la scene et a repousser le fonctionnement du reseau « de porte aporte » et, surtout, la concurrence a l’interieur du reseau a l’arriere-plan. La Table Ronde a notammentpour but de corriger cette vision des choses.
This study explores options for the restructuring and the privatization of PKS, Poland's main state-owned enterprise for road transport of passengers and general freight. As regards privatization, the focus of the study is on road... more
This study explores options for the restructuring and the privatization of PKS, Poland's main state-owned enterprise for road transport of passengers and general freight. As regards privatization, the focus of the study is on road freight haulage operations of PKS and not on its passenger operations by bus. Privatization of road haulage (trucking) is intended to raise the productivity of resources employed in transport and to thereby assist in the recovery of the economy and of employment. The key to this outcome is the creation of a competitive environment and, equally, the introduction of management by, or under the control of, owners with a clear right to the net income from the business. The process of privatization must therefore allow wide scope for the development of commercially alert and market-oriented management. The scope and form of feasible privatization depend also on how road haulage will be regulated and on financing possibilities for private buyers, investors o...
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Note for the reader: This draft was completed on March 29, 1995, as part of a World Bank project to deepen the Bank's knowledge of energy issues in transport. The draft was never published because of a shift in the Bank's... more
Note for the reader: This draft was completed on March 29, 1995, as part of a World Bank project to deepen the Bank's knowledge of energy issues in transport. The draft was never published because of a shift in the Bank's priorities. Although in most cases the data are now out of date, and some of the issues that were then nascent have now emerged full blown, I am putting it on this website because most of the report is still entirely relevant in 2007. More recent data would not change any of the conclusions significantly. Figures 2-16 and 2-33 provide a summary of the use of energy in transport that may be particularly interesting. In addition, with the exception of a few typographical errors, the report is provided in its original draft form. The original report included a second section that contained a set of data files. These have been partly lost: some still exist in Excel spreadsheets; others can only be recreated from the paper copy. Questions about the annex should ...
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... more
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 transport, using single-equation regressions on a cross-section of data from developed (high-income), developing (low-income) and former socialist economies. They also sought answers to two related questions. First, since statistics on national ton-kilometers of freight transport are much scarcer for developing than for developed countries, what is the scope for generalizing from data on high-income countries? Second, within what limits may one apply results obtained from data on market economies to the prospective evolution of freight transport demand in the socialist transitional economies? They report the following finds, subject to caveats related to the simple methodology used. For the samp...
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The role of ownership in railways is highly contentious. Railways, just like any other mode in the transport sector, are simply a collection of assets, operated by a group of people, delivering a service that is itself a derived demand.... more
The role of ownership in railways is highly contentious. Railways, just like any other mode in the transport sector, are simply a collection of assets, operated by a group of people, delivering a service that is itself a derived demand. The question of who owns and manages what, though, has found very different answers in different countries and circumstances: in fact, the answer in any single country has often been unstable, seesawing back and forth depending on circumstance and political fashion.
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ABSTRACT The Staggers Rail Act of 1980 has been intensively studied, but quantitative evaluations of the impacts of the Act have been affected by limitations in publicly available information. In particular, analyses of tariffs... more
ABSTRACT The Staggers Rail Act of 1980 has been intensively studied, but quantitative evaluations of the impacts of the Act have been affected by limitations in publicly available information. In particular, analyses of tariffs (revenue/ton-mile) and profitability (R/VC cost ratios) at the level of particular commodities have been affected by revenue masking, a practice in which actual revenues from contract movements are disguised (“masked”) in publicly available waybill data in order to keep contract pricing terms confidential. This paper describes a method for using publicly available data in making useful estimates of unmasked revenues in a number of important commodity groups. The paper argues that the net effect of revenue masking has been to make commodity specific revenues reported in public waybill data appear significantly higher than they actually are. As a result, the favorable impact of the Act on these tariffs may have been understated and the apparent market power of the railroads may have been exaggerated. Enhanced railroad efficiency due to the interaction of contract tariffs with improved technology and network rationalization has yielded not only significant savings to shippers but also a much stronger financial position for the U.S. Class I railroads.
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ABSTRACT Railways in the Americas date from the mid to late 19th century. They were all initially privately owned, but many Latin American railways underwent an evolution to public ownership and control. All of the rail systems were... more
ABSTRACT Railways in the Americas date from the mid to late 19th century. They were all initially privately owned, but many Latin American railways underwent an evolution to public ownership and control. All of the rail systems were weakening as of the 1970s, and governments were forced to act. In the US and Canada, passenger services were separated from freight, with government support for the passenger services, while freight services remained in the private sector: in both countries the freight operator controls the infrastructure while the passenger operator is a tenant. In Latin America, governments mostly formed vertically integrated concessions to private operators in the 1990s with payments from freight operators and payments to passenger operators. In this paper, we argue that the form and structure of the US and Canadian railways will remain stable in the future unless political sentiment leads to significant modification of the deregulation of the 1980s. In Latin America, because there is currently no intra-modal rail competition on parallel lines, some of the currently vertically integrated freight concessions may experience transition to forms of open access in order to promote competition on the infrastructure.
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Page 1. a> N < o Z3 (/) o o Q o 15 Policy Research WORKING PAPERS Transport WP* u^i Transport, Water, and Urban Development Department and the Technical Department, Europe and Central Asia Regional Office The ...
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At the end of the 1980s, the road transport industries of Poland and Hungary emerged from decades of socialist organization with a small number of massive state-owned enterprises, surrounded by a margin of small-scale private haulage that... more
At the end of the 1980s, the road transport industries of Poland and Hungary emerged from decades of socialist organization with a small number of massive state-owned enterprises, surrounded by a margin of small-scale private haulage that had been growing steadily during the preceding ten years. In the year after the decisive turn in their political systems, both countries formulated privatization programs. In their programs, road haulage was earmarked for privatization but the strategy to be applied to the industry was left open. There is none for privatization on the scale envisaged by the transitional economies, or from their common starting positions. To chart a course, one has only the accepted economic objectives of privatization policy to rely on. This paper draws on the work in Poland and Hungary but enlarges, more than was appropriate in the individual country reports, on those common features of the privatization problem of this one specific industry, and gives the arguments and conclusions that the authors draw from them.
Railway structures are changing, with the old integrated monoliths slowly giving way to more complex structures, including forms of multiple access to infrastructure with the dominant user still in charge, and forms of more independent... more
Railway structures are changing, with the old integrated monoliths slowly giving way to more complex structures, including forms of multiple access to infrastructure with the dominant user still in charge, and forms of more independent ownership of infrastructure with all authorized users being equal access tenants. At the same time, changes in ownership structure are being explored, from allowing some
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... MIKE HULME,1* MAX BOYKOFF,2 JOYEETA GUPTA,3 THOMAS HEYD,4 JILL JAEGER,5 DALE JAMIESON,6 MARIA CARMEN LEMOS,7 KAREN O'BRIEN,8 TIMMONS ROBERTS,9 JOHAN ROCKSTRÖM,10 COLEEN VOGEL11 1School of Environmental Sciences, University ...