The costs for maintaining different track units are analyzed using Swedish and Finnish railway data for the years 1994–1996 and 1997–
1999, respectively. To derive insights on the logic of spending on track maintenance, the analysis is based on few a priori assumptions about
underlying structures. We provide indications of scale economies in track maintenance with respect to traffic load and calculate a policyrelevant
derivative value, i.e. the marginal cost of track use. The paper points to the type of data that has to be compiled in order to implement
a recent Directive of the European Commission in a consistent way.
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