2023-08-14 13:49:45
Adif has awarded Deloitte a consulting and technical support contract to define and structure the surcharges for Adif and Adif Alta Velocidad (AV) railway fees.
The contract was tendered last February, shortly after the entry into force of the reform of the Railway Sector Law, in which Adif is ceded the powers to set the railway fees charged to train operators.
With the previous legal framework, the fees were approved annually in the General State Budget, which prevented the railway infrastructure administrator (Adif) from having the flexibility to adapt the fees to each situation.
The fees are the rates that Adif charges operators such as Renfe, Iryo and Ouigo for the use of the tracks and determine the activity of these operators. Through the new Railway Law, these charges may be adapted to the situation at any given time, thus avoiding weighing down the demand for travel or the supply of trains if the economic situation changes.
As stated in the contract documents, to which Europa Press has had access, the study awarded to Deloitte will make it possible to make a proposal for the structure of the surcharges and their quantification by segments “assumable” by the market.
Community directive 2012/34 establishes that the fees must reflect “the cost directly attributable to the operation of the rail service”, although, in order to recover the investments made, “they may, as long as the market can accept it, charge surcharges based on based on efficient, transparent and non-discriminatory principles, while guaranteeing optimal competitiveness of the rail market segments”.
The spatial scope of the study awarded to Deloitte includes the entire railway network managed by Adif and Adif AV and its final objective is to establish the structure of the surcharges for the 2024-2025 horizon, which may be in force during the period of five years provided for in the draft of the Railway Sector Law.
In order to define the surcharges, Deloitte will have to evaluate their impact, at least, on the theoretical profitability of the operation, the rates, the demand, the use of the infrastructure and the income from fees of Adif and Adif AV.
According to the contract, the consultant will proceed to structure the surcharges of the railway fees, both in their amount and in their form, of Adif and Adif AV developing, at least, a series of tasks, including the analysis of the legal framework that allows the imposition of these surcharges and the most relevant application examples for the Spanish case, as well as the definition and justification of the list of market segments on which they will be applied, tending to criteria such as population, market size or intermodal competitiveness.
At the same time, the contract establishes that Deloitte must analyze the elasticity of demand at the rate for relations and/or brokers, and modulate the surcharges and evaluate their effect on demand, operation and income.
In this sense, the consultant is asked for a tool that allows the integrated analysis of the surcharges, the theoretical profitability of the operator, the rates, the demand, the use of the infrastructure and the income from fees of Adif and Adif AV.
The surcharges must be modulated based on their optimal competitiveness between segments or the market’s capacity to absorb them, and their structure will take into account the differences in the offer of existing operators. In addition, the consultation must analyze to what extent the proposed surcharges contribute to reflecting the internalization of external costs and do not harm rail transport compared to other modes.
Based on the results, an alternative surcharge scheme will be proposed to compensate the railway, particularly High Speed, for external costs not internalized by competing modes.
All of the above will allow the development of the proposal for the structuring of the surcharges to the fees of Adif and Adif AV. The contract establishes that, after four months, Deloitte must deliver a progress document that already contains a preliminary proposal for the structuring of the surcharges, while after eight months the complete document will be presented, which will contain at least two alternative proposals based on the consideration or not of the possible compensation of external costs not internalized by the competing modes.
Adif and Adif AV have carried out various works within the scope of this study that will be made available to the consultant, including temporary development forecasts and characteristics of the different sections of the lines that are not yet in operation; demand forecasts for the different High Speed corridors; commitments to use the capacity requested in the framework agreements in force in the High Speed network, and recent studies on fees within the framework of community regulations.
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