Publications
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Är risken för tågförseningar en prisrelevant marginalkostnad?
Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute, Society, environment and transport, Transport economics Borlänge.
2011 (Swedish)Report (Other academic)Alternative title
Is the risk of train delays a price-relevant marginal cost? (English)
Abstract [en]

The purpose of this paper is to answer the question of whether train delays are a price-relevant marginal cost. The question has been raised by the Swedish infrastructure manager (Trafikverket) which is responsible for setting track access charges. The charging of track access fees is regulated in the Railway Act and consists mainly of marginal cost pricing and fees for cost recovery above marginal cost.

The main reason for charging track fees according to the marginal cost principle is to give economic incentive in order to influence the market agents to take these externalities into account in their decision-making. When an externality is correctly priced this externality is no longer "external" on behalf of the market agents and, in this way, economic efficiency is achieved through a decentralized decision-making.

In order for a certain cost to be price-relevant, with respect to the marginal cost pricing principle, it is required that there are some externalities involved and also that there is a relationship between cost and traffic volume.

Rail services are conducted according to a detailed timetable where each train is regulated geographically with minute precision. Delays primarily occur through an incident, such as infrastructure failure or breakdown of vehicles, leading one or more trains to deviate from the time table. Subsequently this initial delay is spread in the system through the interaction between trains that is built into the timetable.

In the short run the capacity of the infrastructure is fixed. Train delays can therefore be influenced by the number of faults occurred and by the construction of the timetable (which is crucial for the spread of the initial disturbances to other trains).

Recently a new track fee, called "quality fee", has been introduced which is aimed at influencing the number of faults occurring, both on behalf of train operating companies and the infrastructure manager. The fee is initially set at a rather low level and may be raised in the future if it will be considered necessary.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Linköping: Statens väg- och transportforskningsinstitut, 2011. , p. 25
Series
VTI notat ; 22-2011
Keywords [en]
Train, Delay, Cost
Keywords [sv]
Tåg, Förseningar, Kostnader
National Category
Economics and Business
Research subject
Railway: General works, surveys, comprehensive works, Railway: Economics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:vti:diva-550Archive number: TRV 2010/92179OAI: oai:DiVA.org:vti-550DiVA, id: diva2:669240
Available from: 2013-12-03 Created: 2013-12-03 Last updated: 2014-09-18Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(484 kB)314 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 484 kBChecksum SHA-512
9e12ffd046258e863dc4d0c2395f429ee0e9efcaa29c20c37c52b147aa391d9ba15722cf09899b346455025fef79f55a018c3fb9a40cadca869050add2d8602e
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

Authority records

Wieweg, Lena

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Wieweg, Lena
By organisation
Transport economics Borlänge
Economics and Business

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 314 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

urn-nbn

Altmetric score

urn-nbn
Total: 293 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf