This paper proposes a new, two-stage methodology to estimate the relative marginal cost of different types of vehicles running on the rail infrastructure. This information is important particularly where the infrastructure managers wish to differentiate the track access charges by vehicle type for the purpose of incentivizing the development and use of more track-friendly vehicles. EU legislation requires that the European infrastructure managers set the access charges based on the incremental (marginal) cost of the running trains on their networks. The novelty of the approach derives from the combination of: (1) engineering simulation methods that estimate the track damage caused by the rail vehicles; and (2) econometric methods that estimate the relationship between the actual maintenance costs and the different damage mechanisms. This two-stage approach fills an important gap in the literature, given the limitations of the existing “single-stage” engineering or econometric approaches in obtaining the relative marginal costs for different types of damage. The authors demonstrate the feasibility of the method using 45 track sections from Sweden, for which the data on maintenance costs are available together with relevant track and vehicle data for 2012 (supplied by the Swedish Transport Administration). The authors demonstrate the feasibility of producing summary, section-level damage measures for the three damage mechanisms (wear, rolling contact fatigue, and track settlement), which can be taken forward to the second stage. The econometric results of the second stage indicate that it is possible to obtain sensible relationships between cost and the different damage types, and thus produce relative marginal costs by the damage mechanism and in turn the vehicle type. Based on this feasibility study, tracksettlement has been found to be the most expensive (in terms of maintenance cost) of the three mechanisms, followed by the rolling contact fatigue and then the wear. Future applications should focus on larger datasets in order to produce the required degree of precision on the estimation of the marginal cost.

中文翻译：

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估计轨道损坏机制的相对成本：结合经济和工程方法

本文提出了一种新的两阶段方法来估算在铁路基础设施上运行的不同类型车辆的相对边际成本。此信息非常重要，特别是在基础设施管理人员希望按车辆类型区分轨道通行费以激励开发和使用更适合轨道的车辆的情况下。欧盟立法要求欧洲基础设施管理者根据其网络上运行的列车的增量（边际）成本来设定接入费用。该方法的新颖之处在于：(1) 估算轨道车辆造成的轨道损坏的工程模拟方法；(2) 估计实际维修成本与不同损坏机制之间关系的计量经济学方法。鉴于现有“单阶段”工程或计量经济学方法在获取不同类型损害的相对边际成本方面存在局限性，这种两阶段方法填补了文献中的一个重要空白。作者使用来自瑞典的 45 个轨道段证明了该方法的可行性，维护成本数据与 2012 年的相关轨道和车辆数据（由瑞典交通管理局提供）一起提供。作者论证了为三种损伤机制（磨损、滚动接触疲劳和轨道沉降）生成总结性、截面级损伤措施的可行性，并可以推进到第二阶段。第二阶段的计量经济学结果表明，可以获得成本与不同损害类型之间的合理关系，从而通过损坏机制和车辆类型产生相对边际成本。根据这项可行性研究，发现轨道沉降是三种机制中最昂贵的（就维护成本而言），其次是滚动接触疲劳，然后是磨损。未来的应用程序应该专注于更大的数据集，以产生所需的边际成本估计精度。