Open Access to Infrastructure Networks: The Experience of Railroads

Many countries have restructured their railroads and other network industries to require that network providers grant access to independent companies. The potential benefit is to introduce competition among the access users, while the potential cost is to reduce coordination between the network provider and the access users. The experiences of railroads in Australia, Europe, and North America caution that coordination costs are likely to be high when the access provider/user interface is technically complex, the network is close to capacity, the access users are heterogeneous, there is little reciprocity between providers and users, and the access grants are broad.