Governments make substantial contributions to the finance of railways in Europe. This paper first considers the possible justifications for subsidies – namely normalisation of accounts, public service obligations, economies of density, relief of externalities on other modes, wider economic benefits and option values. It then considers the alternative ways of giving subsidies in the form of contributions to infrastructure costs, investment grants and subsidies to services. It concludes that there are good reasons for subsidising railways – in particular a first best argument for subsidising infrastructure will usually exist and a failure to do so will lead to fewer services being operated than are economically justified – but there is a need to ensure subsidies are used efficiently. Ways of achieving this include the setting of clear objectives and financial constraints, decentralisation of decision taking to focussed sector management, regulation and benchmarking of infrastructure costs and the introduction of competition for and in the market. Together these should reduce or eliminate the link between subsidies and inefficiency observed in earlier times.

中文翻译：

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欧洲铁路金融

各国政府为欧洲铁路融资做出了巨大贡献。本文首先考虑了补贴的可能理由–即账目正常化，公共服务义务，密度经济，减轻其他方式的外部性，更广泛的经济利益和期权价值。然后，它考虑了以补贴基础设施成本，投资赠款和服务补贴的形式提供补贴的其他方法。结论是，有充分的理由对铁路进行补贴-特别是通常存在对基础设施进行补贴的第一个最佳论据，而这样做的话将导致运营的服务少于经济上合理的理由-但有必要确保对补贴进行补贴。有效利用。实现这一目标的方法包括设定明确的目标和财务约束，将决策权下放到重点部门管理，基础设施成本的监管和基准确定以及引入市场竞争和市场竞争。这些都将减少或消除补贴与早期观察到的效率低下之间的联系。