Estimating marginal infrastructure cost in new infrastructure charging model

Competitiveness of rail transport compared to road transport has been reducing, especially on regional railway lines. To improve this situation, the EU adopted various directives and regulations to increase efficiency of railway undertakings. In this paper we present an organizational and economic model based on European policies for local railway system. The organizational model is based on multi-criteria decision analysis. For the economic model we used an econometric approach to estimate the cost function and marginal costs in regional lines, which constitute the basis for railway charges. By implementing such an organizational model, the functioning of the railway network will improve. The research found that a change in the existing model of calculating costs of infrastructure use would bring economic effects for the railway infrastructure manager and the providers of transport. Using the proposed model we also found that it is reasonable to increase the flow of goods on unused regional railway lines because the railway infrastructure maintenance costs are inelastic with regard to transported gross tons.