Theoretical and viable charging models for railway infrastructure access: an European survey

This paper examines the pricing models for the use of the railway infrastructure in some European countries. A regulatory environment shall guarantee fair access to essential facilities, specifically in presence of vertically related markets and the existence of an essential facility provided only by one firm. This paper considers two pricing models classified according different principles: the model of marginal cost and the model of full cost. Given that the effective traffic does not influence the relevant fixed costs of the networks, managers will have expected curves of marginal cost firmly under the curves of average cost, and as a result, the current trade-off between the optimal use of the network and the optimal coverage of the costs. This paper states that countries where a marginal cost model is in use, the railway system has a smaller impact on public spending.