NDLI: An assessment of cost management regimes in British rail infrastructure provision

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Cowie, Jonathan Loynes, Sarah
Copyright Year	2012
Abstract	Over the last decade, British railway engineering efficiency has come under close scrutiny, with general perceptions of massive maintenance cost escalations and a general lack of control over these costs. This is exemplified by headline figures such as Roger Ford’s perceptions of a 50% rise in maintenance costs since privatisation (Mod Railw 638:8, 2001), or the more recent figure of a doubling in all rail costs since privatisation presented by Shaoul (Public Money Manag 26:151–158, 2006). Little, however, has appeared in the academic literature on the subject. This paper considers these issues through an examination of British railway infrastructure costs over the period 1980–2009, which has seen three different infrastructure management regimes in place—the nationalised BR (1980–1994), the privatised Railtrack (1995–2001) and the not for dividend Network Rail (2002–2010). Infrastructure costs are examined in total for all operating costs (including maintenance but excluding renewals and depreciation), and under two sub categories, signalling and management costs. The results show that in the case of total operating costs, by the end of the period (up to 2010) these had returned to pre-privatisation levels. The results also show that costs increased significantly following privatisation due to imperfect competition in sub contractor markets, but large declines in the last 6 years have eradicated most of these costs increases, although still do not match the best achieved under full public sector management. Management costs associated with the infrastructure on the other hand have increased significantly.
Starting Page	1281
Ending Page	1299
Page Count	19
File Format	PDF
ISSN	00494488
Journal	Transportation
Volume Number	39
Issue Number	6
e-ISSN	15729435
Language	English
Publisher	Springer US
Publisher Date	2012-02-19
Publisher Place	Boston
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Rail infrastructure management X-inefficiency Privatisation Imperfect competition Innovation/Technology Management Economic Geography Regional/Spatial Science Engineering Economics, Organization, Logistics, Marketing
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Development Transportation Civil and Structural Engineering

Sl.	Authority	Responsibilities	Communication Details
1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
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