Rail and road freight transport network efficiency of Canada, member states of the EU, and the USA

Abstract

The main research problem has been analyzing and comparing the efficiencies of road and rail freight transport networks in different geographical contexts and derive policy suggestions from the results based on a dataset that spans multiple continents, covers multiple countries and covers a longer time period. For Europe, the benchmarking results for rail indicate that the efficiency of rail freight companies must be encouraged, however, the efficiency of the rail freight system should be treated on a single European level. In the SFA road model for the whole period (2000−2012), it shows that many countries are already quite efficient which suggest that policy should aim for keeping the efficiency high. In addition, a relatively lower population density leads to relatively more infrastructure needs and less efficiency which might lead certain countries to accept a lower efficiency. In Europe, rail efficiency shows that liberalization of rail freight transport does not have much impact in the sense that marked improvements in efficiency for individual countries can be observed. In the end, freight transport efficiencies in different geographical contexts have been analyzed and improvements in governance decisions have been suggested.