This paper compares three European countries with long experience of competition in rail transport - Britain, Sweden, and Germany. Given the nature of the reforms undertaken, we would expect the British approach to be the most successful, with Sweden next and Germany least successful. But an...

The purpose of this paper is to describe Sweden's recent reforms to open the railway passenger markets to entry, and to address how the reforms have handled four critical issues for the success of the reforms: the allocation of infrastructure capacity; the provision of maintenance and terminal...

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...

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...

Around one million people are killed world wide every year in road-traffic accidents. The risks and consequences of accidents increase progressively with speed, which ultimately is determined by the individual driver. The behaviour of the motorist thus affects both her own and other peoples...

High speed is an important determinant of accidents for speeders as well as for other motorists. This paper develops a framework for analyzing instruments that encourage drivers to internalize the full consequences of their behavior with respect to choice of speed using Pay-As-You-Speed (PAYS)...

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...

This paper compares the experience of the two countries in Europe with the most experience of passenger rail service franchising – Britain and Sweden. It examines the nature of the contracts between the franchising authority and the franchisee, and between the franchisee and the infrastructure...

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