ریسک و پاداش در قرارداد راه آهن

This workshop considered the role of risks and rewards in rail transport by considering evidence on the impacts of industry structure, franchising and infrastructure charges. A schema for the allocation of risks and rewards was developed, which indicated that strategic risks should be borne by authorities and operational risks by operators, but that tactical risks were more difficult to allocate and appropriate reward mechanisms more difficult to design. The extent to which these difficulties can be addressed by competitive tendering and alternatives such as trusting partnerships and negotiated performance based contracts was considered.

This was one of the three workshops tasked with examining risk and reward in public transportation. However, given the composition of the workshop members and the papers presented and in order to introduce a degree of product differentiation, it was decided to focus on rail transport. This report is therefore structured as follows. In the next section, the evidence from eight papers covering three broad themes (industry structure, franchising and infrastructure charges) is assessed. In a subsequent section, the discussion among the participants in the Workshop (from eight countries – Australia, France, Japan, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Sweden and UK) is summarised with respect to risk and reward and five of the identified ‘big agenda items’ of the conference. Finally, some tentative conclusions are drawn.

In conclusion, the workshop believed that high risks and low rewards make the contracting-out of passenger rail services difficult, particularly where there is a significant revenue component in the rewards. It is therefore not necessarily the best solution in all cases, but it is an obvious solution to consider, particularly where excessive costs are suspected, as is still the case for many publicly owned operations. There remain many uncertainties about the best way of doing it, particularly where there is a desire to give the operator a major tactical role in the development of the services. The experience of the refranchised rail services in Great Britain and the experiments with giving public transport operators responsibility for tactical functions in the Netherlands will provide new evidence which may be discussed at Thredbo 11.