Restructuring the Polish Railway for Competition

The Polish government is considering methods of the privatizing and possible restructuring of the Polish National Railway, PKP, that would improve the efficiency of the railroad while creating some form of competition in order to prevent monopoly pricing. Traditional intramodal competition is unlikely to be feasible in the foreseeable future, and for the most important commodities carried by PKP, intermodal competition is not important. A proposal under discussion is to separate the ownership of track and trains and seek to create competition among different train operators over a single track network. This paper compares this proposal to similar proposals and arrangements in other countries and evaluates its feasibility for Poland.