Between 2001 and 2016, four legislative packages were adopted to open rail transport markets to competition, improve interoperability, and create a unified European railway area. These include rules on charging, capacity allocation, licensing, safety, the creation of the European Railway Agency, national rail regulators, and passenger rights.

This report provides a basic stocktaking of those railways, explaining the industry structure and the current situation. Basic data on network size; volume; passenger fares and freight tariffs; labor productivity; network density; and perceived service quality assets, traffic, pricing and staffing have been compiled into the Developing Country Rail Database, which could be useful for analysis and comparisons across regions.

World Bank. 2022. Railways in Developing Countries: A Global Review. © Washington, DC: World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37394

Many organizations and investors want to support green activities and a variety of climate finance sources and instruments have been developed todo just that. However, railways have had limited success in accessing climate specific financing instruments. This report examines the experience in attracting financing from climate-specific financing instruments of railways in LMICs.

Summary

The case study includes a sample railway concession agreement drafted for a state in Sub-Saharan Africa.The study is based in part on several actual case studies on railway concessioning in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, several features of the general context and data have been changed for pedagogical purposes. The Republic of Ifrikya should therefore be considered an entirely fictitious country and the description of conditions there should not in any way be construed as mirroring the situation in any country that has recently entered into a railway concessioning arrangement.

This report is in response to questions regarding perceived unrestrained monopolistic behavior by private sector operators in the port and rail sectors in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA). Indeed, prima facie, and for historical reasons, much of SSA's transport network is organized in multiple port/railway corridors that appear to favor potential monopolistic behavior. During the course of the analysis, it became evident that other equally important issues related to financial performance and attractiveness of concessions design needed to be addressed.

The case study of the concessioning of the Ifrikya railway was prepared by Karim- Jacques Budin, Lead Railway Specialist in the Transport Unit of the World Bank. The study is based in part on several recent actual case studies on railway concessioning in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, several features of the general context and data have been changed for pedagogical purposes.

Any large city depends on its public transport system. It connects people to work, to services, and to each other. For these reasons, many governments  are closely involved in public transport policy and operations in their jurisdictions. 

In 1999, in pursuit of greater efficiency and service quality, the (then)  Victorian Government split Melbourne’s train and tram system into 5 franchises. It conducted a competitive tender for each franchise, and awarded them to 3 private sector franchisees for periods of between 12-15 years. 

It contains the following terms and conditions: