Europe's railways are going through a period of radical restructuring in the drive to improve their efficiency and competitiveness. The emphasis is on fostering commercial freedom through a clearer separation of the roles of the State and of rail enterprises and through a progressive opening of...

This paper empirically analyses whether full ownership separation strengthens rail in comparison with other transport modes – a major goal of European and national transport policies. Data from nine European countries in the period 1994-2009 are evaluated, with the end result that the positive...

This report provides a framework for making reliable comparisons of the efficiency of rail systems. Efficiency is of concern to all governments but measuring it for railways is challenging. This is because of the complexity of providing rail services and the diversity of business models adopted...

The ITF has produced a series of reports and discussion papers addressing the interrelated issues of railway structure and performance; see for example Beck et al. (2013), Thompson (2013), ECMT (2007) and, Thompson (2007). The academic literature on this subject is also significant, with good...