Marginal Railway Renewal Costs: A Survival Data Approach

In this paper, renewal costs for railway tracks are investigated using survival analysis. The purpose is to derive the effect from increased traffic volumes on rail renewal cycle lengths and to calculate associated marginal costs. A flow sample of censored data containing almost 1 500 observations on the Swedish main railway network is used. We specify Weibull accelerated failure time regression models, and estimate deterioration elasticities for total tonnage as well as for passenger and freight tonnages separately. Marginal costs are calculated as a change in present values of renewal costs from premature renewal following increased traffic volumes.