Many European countries have sought to increase the efficiency of national railroad companies through a range of reforms: separating infrastructure and operations, creating independent regulatory institutions and providing access to the network to third parties. To estimate the effects of...

The Russian Federation is in the process of making major structural changes to its railway and electricity sectors. Both sectors will be at least partly vertically disintegrated, with the aim of creating competition in the "upstream" sector while maintaining state ownership and control of the...

The objective of this paper is to analyze the impact of regulatory and environmental conditions on technical efficiency of European railways. Using a panel data set of 31 railway firms from 22 European countries from 1994 to 2005, a multioutput distance function model, including regulatory and...

The European Commission years ago adopted a policy of encouraging the substitution of motor carrier haulage of freight with rail and water carrier haulage, as part of its "green" agenda of reducing fuel consumption, emission of pollutants, carbon intensity, and road congestion. Regarding railway...

Purpose: This paper intends to provide a comparative analysis of the Czech, the Hungarian, the Polish and the Slovak railway development strategies in light of the evolution of transport needs, travel habits, freight volumes, and regional business relations. By offering a general SWOT analysis...

This paper is aimed at analysing state aid to the railway sector in selected countries of the European Union. Although this is a preliminary exercise, literature lacks of specificity. From the analysis, a highly differentiated situation emerges: a group of countries with permanently lower...

Infrastructure is widely recognized as a key ingredient in a country’s economic success. However many issues surrounding infrastructure management are not well analysed. This paper assess the performance of rail infrastructures management. Focusing on key European countries this study monitors...

The research investigates the different policies for the development of rail transport infrastructures in Europe. The effects on the competitiveness of the different national rail supply industries are evaluated

The railways of Russia and the CEE countries - generally much more freight oriented, and much more important to their countries' economies, than those of Western Europe - are in the process of restructuring. In most cases the "vertical separation" reform model is being pursued, and reformers are...