Heike Link
Senior Research Manager at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin)
Presentation title:
Cost recovery and economic efficiency of track access charging in Germany
Summary:
Germany was amongst the pioneers in opening up the rail network for third parties against payment of infrastructure charges. Since 1994, four fundamentally different track access charging schemes have been developed by the major provider of rail infrastructure in Germany, DB Netz. All of them based on the aim of full cost recovery, they ranged from one-part pricing schemes over a two-part scheme up to the new Ramsey based charging scheme. In addition, DB Station & Service, the provider of rail stations, levies charges for the use of stations within a meanwhile third version of a station charging scheme. The presentation will review to what extent the principle of economic efficiency is reflected in the track access charging schemes, with a focus of the new Ramsey based pricing scheme.
Speaker biography:
Heike Link is Senior Research Manager at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin (DIW Berlin) in the department Energy, Transport and Environment. She has been in charge for a variety of national and international research and consultancy projects on infrastructure issues, transport pricing and railway economics such as access pricing, rail competition and efficiency analysis in the rail sector. The clients of these projects include institutions in Germany such as the Transport Ministry, the Federal Environmental Board and the Federal Road Authority, the European Commission, the OECD and national institutions in Europe as for example in Austria, Spain, Italy, Switzerland and in the UK. Her work has been published both in international refereed journals and as book contributions.