Analyzing Financial Relationship between Railway Industry Players in Shared Railway Systems

Abstract

Capacity pricing and allocation play important roles in efficient management of railway corridors, especially shared ones. This study analyzes how train operators would respond to different track-access charges as a first step to understanding the relationship between train operators and infrastructure managers in railway systems with some level of vertical separation. With the modeling of a corridor whose users are longdistance high-speed trains and freight trains along the entire corridor and commuter trains offering services around large urban areas in the corridor, the focus is narrowed down to each individual operator, and the factors that drive each operator's ultimate service levels are studied. Assuming an environment in which the train operators are competing for capacity, financial goals and boundary conditions of each train operator are derived, and a number of sensitivity analyses for various typical and extreme conditions are performed. This model allows forecasting the train operator's response to track-access charges and can thus help the government, regulators, and infrastructure managers in the design of appropriate capacity pricing and allocation schemes.