A Simple Model of Rail Infrastructure Capacity and Costs.

The recent White Paper on "New Opportunities for the Railways" (Cm 2012, 1992) proposes that British Rail's responsibilities for operation and infrastructure will be separated. A new track authority, Railtrack, will be established and will operate without subsidy, except for capital grants in cases where a satisfactory cost-benefit return is achieved. It is acknowledged that these new arrangements will lead to some difficulties in allocating and charging for infrastructure, especially where rail infrastructure is congested, and consultants have been hired by Government to examine this issue. The principles that Government has specified should underly the access and charging regime are that it should: (a)Promote efficient operation (b)Promote competition and innovation (c)Encourage efficient use of infrastructure and other resources (d)Not discriminate unfairly between competing operators and services (e)Provide the means for financing Railtrack's infrastructure. The relevant theory is embodied in the literature concerning peak load pricing and optimal investment for public enterprises as expounded in standard text books (Turvey, 1971, Rees, 1984, Brown and Sibley, 1986.) and put into practice in most areas of the transport sector (eg Hansson and Nilsson, 1989, for rail, Small and Winston, 1988, for road, Bishop and Thompson, 1992, for air). The aim of this paper is not to make a contribution to this theory but to use it in conjunction with simple models of rail's infrastructure requirements and costs to highlight the key problems in infrastructure allocation and charging. The structure of this paper is as follows. In section two we consider a hypothetical rail line and the likely costs of different service levels. In section three, we relax the assumption that all trains are operated at the same speed and re-examine the likely costs of different service levels. In section 4, we go on to examine the pricing implications of our findings. In a final section, the implications of this analysis for policy are assessed

European Railway Comparisons – Company Profiles

This work was undertaken as part of a project sponsored by the British Railways Board entitled `European Railway Comparisons'. The aims of this project are as follows: (i)To compare the current efficiency of European railway operators and examine recent trends at both aggregate and disaggregate levels. (ii)To assess the effects of economies of scale and economies of density on European rail operations. (iii)To make an exploratory assessment of the potential for further disaggregation by market type (InterCity, Commuter, Freight) in order to make detailed comparisons of market shares. The main methods employed to carry out this study are as follows: (i)A review of the literature on railway cost and productivity analysis. Preliminary findings are given in Working Paper 354 and a paper presented to the World Conference on Transport Research (Nash, C.A. and Preston, J.M. (1992) "Assessing the Performance of European Railways"). (ii)Collation of published data for 13 European State Railway Operators. (iii)Face to face interviews with managers at the 13 State Railway companies in order to check our understanding of published data sources, gain more infomation at a disaggregate level (administered by a self completion questionnaire) and obtain an understanding of the institutional background. This report summarises some of the background information that was obtained from the interviews undertaken in the summer of 1992. A company profile is developed for each operator under four main headings: Objectives and Management, Finance, the Freight Market and the Passenger Market

Competition in Rail Transport: A New Opportunity for Railways?

Throughout Europe, and in many other parts of the world, railways are suffering from declining market share and deteriorating financial performance; consequently there is renewed interest in deregulation and the introduction of competition into rail transport as a way of improving performance. An EC Directive now provides for access to rail infrastructure for third parties to run their own international trains in some circumstances. After a long debate, the British Government in July 1992 published a White Paper (New Opportunities for the Railways) which aimed to go much further. It would both open access to the infrastructure for any licensed operator and franchise out existing passenger services via a competitive bidding process; all freight services would be privatised outright. Draft legislation to implement these proposals, as well as a string of consultation documents on details have also been published, and an Interim Report from the Select Committee of Members of Parliament examining the proposals has appeared. This paper review the debate that is currently raging over the British government proposals. It considers the potential for innovation and cost savings which they offer, as well as the problems of increased transactions costs, lack of competitive bidding and other potential inefficiencies of the new system. The key issue of the charging regime for access to the infrastructure is also addressed. It is concluded that competition in the provision of freight services is desirable, but that passenger services present many more problems, and that the proposals need modification if they are to meet their objectives

Forecasting Motorists Long Term Behaviour in the Greater Nottingham Area

This report outlines work carried out to assess the factors that, in the medium and long term, may influence motorists' mode choice in the Greater Nottingham area. This work was based on four Stated Preference (SP) experiments that examined the choice between car and ordinary bus, car and bus-based park and ride, car and express bus and between departure times for car users. Just over 6,000 self completion questionnatres were distributed at random to residents in 28 wards. Over 1.700 usable responses were returned. representing a response rate of 29%. Despite a number of problems, a series of four strategic forecasting models were developed. These incoporated some important findings including that motorists value delay highly, value parking costs more highly than petrol costs and value adjusting their departure time less highly than in-vehicle time. The four forecasting models were then used to examine five scenarios; the introduction of park and ride, the effect of projected 2001 road traffic speeds, the effect of petrol cost increases, the effect of parking cost increases and the effect of decreasing bus in-vehicle time. Although there were a number of technical difficulties. our forecasts suggest that decreases in speeds, parking costs and petrol costs will not halt the growth in road traffic but will slow it down. Where possible motorists are more likely to change the time of theirjourney than theirmode. For dramatic changes in mode split both a big stick and big carrot are probably required. The big stick might be provided by some of parking control or road pricing, whilst the carrot might be some form of a high quality, fast bus network (or indeed other forms of public transport with a segregated right of way). The role of park and ride is likely to be relatively marginal but may be worth pursuing if part of an overall traffic management policy. There was little evidence from our models of there being any critical "thresholds" or "trigger points". However, many of the processes we have examined seem to have cumulative impacts and our forecasts identified the doubling of car journey times as being a possible "catalyst" which is likely to be achieved in the early part of the next centur

Some Guidelines for Evaluating New Local Rail Stations

This paper, based on vark undertaken as part of a Ph.D. studentship on new local rail staticms in West Yorkshire, seeks to offer guidelines for identifying and appraising new local rail station sites, and recommendations for further work on the subject. It outlines three methods of forecasting demand at such stations - a simple method based on mean trip rates at certain distance bands for similar existing new stations, an aggregate regression model, and a combination of a disaggregate mode split model for the journey to work with an aggregate non-work journey model. Whilst the latter models do provide greater accuracy, it is suggested that a simple trip-rate model may be adequate for one-off low-cost stations, although packages of stations and train service alterations need more thorough investigation. On this basis, it is suggested that for new stations with the characteristics of those in West Yorkshire (i.e. suburban stations in residential areas a few miles from major employment centres), sites which are free of significant engineering problems, with good road access, close to an existing bridge or crossing and with a population of at least 2,000 within 800 metres of the site, should be sought. On single track rural branch lines, new stations may be justified at much lower population levels

Greater Manchester PTE New Railway Station Demand Prediction Model

This paper reports on work that was initiated in February 1989 to develop a simple model that can accurately predict the usage of new stations in the Greater Manchester area. The starting point for this study was the work carried out by Moss in 1988 in which an attempt was made to develop a new station demand model based on patronage data for 9 of the 10 new stations that had been opened in Greater Manchester since 1984. In his research the main explanatory variable was the population within 1,000m and the sub-divisions 0-300m, 300-600m, 600-800m and 800-1,000m were also examined. Arbitrary dummy variables were studied to assess the effect of service frequency, car ownership, alternative routes and park and ride. The main finding was that population, on its own, did not appear to be an adequate explanatory variable. For example, Mills Hill was found to attract 7.9 times as many passengers per 1,000 households as Hag Fold. In other words, there was very large variation in the trip rates at these nine new stations, with a mean of 36.2 and a standard deviation of 22.4 daily trips per thousand households. An alternative approach is that developed in West Yorkshire based on multiple regression techniques (Preston, 1987). This model predicts the number of rail trips between two stations as a function of: (i) the population within 800 metres of the origin station, (ii) the proportion of that population in social classes I and II, (iii) the population between 800 metres and 2 kilometres of the origin station, (iv) the number of jobs within 800 metres of the destination station, (v) the generalised cost of rail, (vi) the generalised cost of competing modes (bus and car). This model is a form of direct demand model in that it forecasts the number of trips (T) between origin i and destination j by mode k (ie. Tijk). In this paper, we shall develop a simpler version of this model which will simply predict the number of trips from origin i by mode k (ie. Tik). We shall call this a trip end model. The West Yorkshire model (called the Aggregate Simultaneous Model - ASM) was calibrated for 39 existing stations based on patronage data collected in the early 1980s. In this work, we shall attempt to calibrate a similar model for 36 existing stations in Greater Manchester, based on patronage data collected in 1987/8. These stations are listed in Appendix 1. Of these stations 16 are on what we have termed the Oldham Loop, 9 are on the Bury Line, 9 are on the Altrincham Line and the remaining 2 are on the Buxton Line. It was felt that this sample was reasonably representative of Greater Manchester new stations although well used commuter stations may be unavoidably over represented due to the availability of patronage data which dictated at data set. In developing a new station model for Greater Manchester, we have borne in mind comments made about Moss's earlier work by Greater Manchester PTE, Greater Manchester Transportation Unit, Manchester City Council and British Rail, Provincial (Midland) and in particular the consideration of existing trip patterns, especially to central Manchester. Whilst we encountered difficulties in obtaining relevant data, we were able to explicitly incorporate a number of other points. Our work will be based on multiple regression and will be able to examine the effect of distance, frequency and car ownership directly. Use will be made of 0-800m and 800m - 2km populations (rather than households within 1km), adjusted to take into account overlapping catchment areas. Figure 1 shows the zoning scheme used. Having dealt with the background to this study, the rest of the report will be as follows: - in section 2 we outline the data sought and made available for our study; - in section 3 we describe the process of calibrating a simple trip end model; - in section 4 our simple trip end model is developed further and in greater depth with the aim of maximising the goodness of fit; - in section 5 we develop a more generalised framework; - in section 6 we calibrate a simple trip end model for walk access patrons; -in section 7 we comment on the criteria of model choice, discuss statistical problems related to cross-sectional data and summarise our findings

Reassessing the financial and social costs of public transport

This paper uses a previously developed spreadsheet cost model which simulates public transport modes operated on a 12km route to analyse the total costs of different passenger demand levels. The previous cost model was a very powerful tool to estimate the social and operator cost for different public transport technologies. However, as the model is strategic based, some assumptions are very basic and idealized and the demand was assumed to be exogenous (externally fixed). When the level of demand is high for the lower capacity public transport technologies, passengers may find the incoming vehicle full and therefore they have to wait more than one service interval. This paper applies queueing theory to investigate the probability of having to wait longer than the expected service headways which will affect the average passenger waiting time. The extra waiting time for each passenger is calculated and applied in the spreadsheet cost model. The speed-flow equation in the original spreadsheet model assumes the speed decreases according to the ratio of the current frequency and the lane capacity which is based on the safety headway without any passenger boarding. However, this may vary in different operating environments. Therefore, the speed equation is improved by moving from a linear equation to a piecewise equation that considers the features of different operating environments. To evaluate the differences after applying these equations, endogenous demand rather than exogenous demand will be investigated by using the elasticities for passenger waiting time and journey time

Urban Transport Market Theoretical Analysis.

1.The Institute for Transport Studies (ITS) was commissioned by the Department of Transport (DoT), the Association of Metropolitan Authorities (AMA) and the Passenger Transport Executive Group (PTEG) to undertake this project in November 1992. 2.The objectives of this study were: (a)to establish a simple economic model of urban transport operations, based on present policies; (b)to estimate, using the model, the theoretically optimal form of intervention in urban rail under the present policy constraints, and differences between this optimum and current procedures; (c)to investigate how improved procedures might be implemented in practice in the light of the kind of data which are currently available or become available in the course of a Section 56 appraisal and to make suggestions for additional data collection

Privatizing Transport Industries: The British Experience.

If any one policy has characterised the Conservative government in Britain since 1979 it is privatization. Although the policy was first canvassed in the United States, by the early 1990s Britain had become the world leader and privatization the country's most visible export (1). Moreover, transport industries were very much at the forefront of the Thatcher revolution in industrial ownership and organisation. This paper firstly defines what is meant by privatization. Secondly, it assesses the economic reasons for privatization. Thirdly, it outlines the main privatizations that have occurred in the British transport market and assesses their impact. Fourthly, the applicability of the British experiment to other countries, particularly in the developing world, is considered. It is concluded that a necessary pre-requisite to privatization is commercialisation and as a result emphasis in many developing countries will be on reforming public enterprise rather than on out and out privatization

Passenger Demand Forecasting for New Rail Services – Manual of Advice

This Seminar reports on a research grant undertaken for the Economic and Social Research Council that commenced in January 1989 and is due to be completed in December 1991. The aims of the project are: 1. To develop forecasting approaches that are suitable for predicting the demand of new rail services. 2. To assess the accuracy of these approaches in terms of their predictions of current and future patronage. 3. By comparing the relative costs and accuracy of a range of forecasting approaches, the most appropriate methods for different levels of investment will be determined 4. To produce a manual of advice