Freight transport for development toolkit : rail freight

This paper is about how railway freight can best be organized to contribute to economic development because of its comparative economic advantages in serving certain forms and flows of freight, its wider community benefits compared to road transport, and its sometimes significant implications for national budgets. Nearly all the freight that railways carry could be carried by one or more other modes of transport. But railways have a particular role to perform. They can convey a much wider range of freight types than pipelines. They are faster and more universally available than inland waterway routes. They have infinitely greater carrying capacity and carry at a fraction of the costs of air transport. And, if they are well designed and managed, they can, for a wide range of commodities, deliver both higher capacity and lower costs of operation than road haulage, at lower external costs to the community. The paper advises on actions that railway managements and governments in developing countries can take to help railways to be more efficient and effective in serving freight markets. It argues that such commercial success in the marketplace is also the key to securing the wider external community benefits of use of railways compared to the alternative of road freight transport. The paper pleads no special case for conveyance of freight on steel rails rather than by any other means. If competitive and community advantage cannot realistically be attained, which is sometimes the case, rail freight can only be marginal to development, with no reason for favoring railways over any other transport modes. The paper provides an overview of the industry, moves on to the specific management and policy guidelines summarized above, and then illustrate examples of their implementation in a series of case studies. Managers, policy-makers and other stakeholders in the railway industry are the main target audience of this paper.