An analysis of the railway access charges regime in the Italian context

An appropriate access charges regime represents the basis for implementing an open market and for guaranteeing fair competition in the rail sector. In accordance with the recent European and national legislations, the Italian rail infrastructure manager has lately presented a new charges scheme with a better cost orientation and a deeper market segmentation based on the ability to pay. This paper describes and compares the new and the previous regimes, presenting a case study on selected Italian corridors. Interesting insights are added by applying a data envelopment analysis to rank the efficiency of the rail segments considering the different standpoints of three stakeholders: infrastructure manager, rail operators and rail regulator. The results of the case study, beside showing different patterns by applying the two charges schemes, suggest that high-speed services may better respond to the needs of infrastructure manager and rail regulator while the rail operator's perspective ranks better short connections by regional trains (especially under the new regime). This evaluation framework could help policy makers, transport authorities or railway stakeholders to identify where and how benefits could be gained or lost and by whom.