SURVEY ON HEAVY RAIL CONTRACTS

1. SURVEY ON HEAVY RAIL CONTRACTS A comparison between the different public services contracts for heavy rail administered by the EMTA Authorities EMTA Budapest Meeting 15 -16 April 2010

2. FOREWORD • Heavy rail is one of the most relevant public transport services in metropolitan areas. It involves huge investments in infrastructure building and maintenance and higher cost of operation if compared to the other PT modes (metro, tramway, buses). • The aim of this document is to highlight the different contract structures and the average level of public subsidy where financial data is not a confidential information. • The information received from the Members can be useful for all the other EMTA members to add more strength to the contract management. • Our objective is to verify how the unit cost of our rail service is aligned with the average cost in the other European metropolitan areas, in order to quantify the right amount for the tender offers.

3. AUTHORITIES THAT FILLED OUR QUESTIONNAIRE • Our initiative was launched in September 2009 with a 2 pages questionnaire that was circulated among the EMTA Members. • As of now we have received contributions from: • - Stuttgart Region • - RMV Frankfurt • - ATM Barcelona • - SYPTE Sheffield • ZTM Warsaw • AMT Montréal • In addition to this we examined the Contract 2008 – 2011 between STIF and SNCF for the rail service in Ile-de-France (available on paper).

4. THE RAIL SERVICES OFFER • The table shows the offer in Train*Km per year. • The amount of service offered varies between the 57 million train*km of Région Ile-de-France to the 2,8 M Km of Barcelona. However it must be underlined that in the case of Barcelona only the service surveyed is light rail and not heavy rail. • Financial data concerning the AMT contracts are not available due to pending negotiations.

5. OPERATORS AND TYPE OF CONTRACT • The table shows the type of contract adopted by each authority. • The Net cost contract is more frequently used (5 cases out of 7).

6. THE AMOUNT OF SUBSIDIES • The table shows the amount of subsidy for each contract. Some contracts include also a subsidy for the infrastructure charge. In some cases data were confidential and not publicly available. None of the Authorities’ contracts calculated the unit amount on a different basis (i.e. per train hour instead of train km)

7. INVESTMENTS • This table show the different investment policies set up by the Authorities. In some cases investments are included in the contract subsidies.

8. ADDITIONAL SERVICES

9. ADDITIONAL SERVICES

10. CONCLUSIONS • The European regulations impose specific Public Service Obligations to the operators • The Service contract is a strategic tool for the Authorities to promote improvements in the quality of service • Our proposal is to set up an Observatory of the Public Services Contracts inside EMTA with the following tasks: • Compare the main indicators that influence the cost of operation and therefore the amount of subsidy needed to run the service (i.e. cost of personnel, infrastructure access charge, traction charge) • All the results of this activity can be included in a periodic report to be circulated among Members.