This paper compares the experience of three European countries with long experience of competition in rail transport – Britain, Sweden and Germany. Britain is characterised by complete separation of infrastructure from operations, competition either for or in the market for the entire...

The impact of policy instruments supposed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from road freight transports may seem smaller than expected. Using insights from economics and contract theory, the paper sorts out the (possible) instances of market failure in the freight transport market; operator...

The purpose of this paper is to describe Sweden’s recent reforms to open the railway passenger markets to entry, and to addresses four critical issues for the success of the reforms; the allocation of infrastructure capacity, the provision of maintenance and terminal facilities, the access to...

This is a draft text for a chapter in Handbook on Research Methods in Transport Economics and Policy to be published by Edward Elgar Publishing. It provides an overview of issues related to scarcity in scheduled transport modes with emphasis on railways. The paper separates the scarcity or...

This paper considers the choice between different approaches to contract for the construction and maintenance of infrastructure projects. The need to control for user and third party costs over the life cycle of an asset is demonstrated to be a core aspect of welfare maximising contract design....

This paper compares two approaches for providing public transport: competitive tendering and vouchers. The functioning of tendering is well known. The voucher alternative means that commercial operators charge passengers a fare and are also paid by the public sector principal for each. The paper...

The choice of transport infrastructure projects to include in the National Transport Infrastructure Plans in Sweden is often said to be motivated by the weighing of cost against social benefits. Examining the projects that are included in the Plans, it is clear, however, that not all projects...

One policy that is believed to increase the rate of innovation and the level of productivity is to move from Design-bid-build contracts (DBB) to Design-Build contracts (DB). A common view is that the latter provides the contractor more degrees of freedom to enable innovation. This hypothesis...

Using a large set of data, including age, pavement type, traffic etc., on sections of the road network, this paper sets out to assess the marginal cost of using the road infrastructure. It suggests a strategy for identifying major differences in marginal costs across the road network, and...