IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpe/jtecpo/v42y2008i2p189-224.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Assessing the Marginal Infrastructure Maintenance Wear and Tear Costs for Britain's Railway Network

Author

Listed:
  • Phill Wheat
  • Andrew S. J. Smith

Abstract

This paper applies econometric methods to estimate marginal track maintenance cost in Britain - for the first time. The British case is the most radical example of rail reform in the world, and the 2005 Railway Act has resulted in a new and unique regulatory process for determining funding and service levels, where the marginal cost of changing service patterns will be a key input. Cost elasticity and marginal cost estimates are reported and compared against the results of the engineering-based approaches currently used to set variable access charges in Britain, and also against those reported for other countries. The relationship between traffic density and elasticity and marginal cost estimates is explored. The paper also discusses the potential biases introduced into elasticity and marginal cost estimates when dealing with a railway that may be out of steady state, and how to adjust for these. © 2008 LSE and the University of Bath

Suggested Citation

  • Phill Wheat & Andrew S. J. Smith, 2008. "Assessing the Marginal Infrastructure Maintenance Wear and Tear Costs for Britain's Railway Network," Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, University of Bath, vol. 42(2), pages 189-224, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:tpe:jtecpo:v:42:y:2008:i:2:p:189-224
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.catchword.com/cgi-bin/cgi?ini=bc&body=linker&reqidx=0022-5258(20080501)42:2L.189;1-
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tpe:jtecpo:v:42:y:2008:i:2:p:189-224. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.bath.ac.uk/e-journals/jtep .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.