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Rail regulation encompasses the following responsibilities:

Economic policy

This area of rail regulation covers issues concerning the general handling of specific regulatory aspects of operational regulation activities.
Support is generally provided to the other rail regulation sections in form of guidelines or internal reports. It includes the concept for evaluating the approval of long-term framework agreements. Infrastructure managers use these contracts to allocate infrastructure capacity to railway undertakings in defined bandwidths for a period of up to 15 years. This enhances investment security for the parties concerned but also restricts the competitive scope of other railway undertakings.

Economic policy also entails examining the economic issues arising in conjunction with the evolution of the regulation regime or any potential changes in the general conditions of the sector (eg economic evaluation and impact assessment of different regulatory approaches, effects of changes in the financing structure of rail infrastructure on infrastructure access charges, etc.).
The Section’s current focus is on evaluating possible procedures and defining the requisite framework conditions for determining the efficiency potential of regulated infrastructure managers. It has become necessary to determine the efficiency of undertakings for the new Rail Regulation Act (ERegG) on the Calculation of Charges conforming to Regulatory Criteria.

Market monitoring

In its annual primary market survey the Section sends about 800 questionnaires (comprehensive survey) to railway undertakings and public contracting organisations operating in the regional rail passenger transport sector. The questionnaires are evaluated and the findings form the basis for regulatory activities and are used in several reports.


As part of the Section's involvement at international level in one of IRG-RAIL's working groups, the data also serve as a basis for the joint publication of the “IRG-RAIL Market Monitoring Report”.
The survey will in future be published in a web portal where the Section also plans to collect the data needed for regulating charges.

Reporting

The Section responsible for Economic Policy in Rail Regulation, Market monitoring and Statistics deals with the following:

  • compilation of the Railway Market Analysis which also sets out some of the market survey data and which is available on the Internet;
  • coordination of the Railway Activity Report (Section 14(4) AEG);
  • coordination of the Rail Regulation Department's contributions to the Bundesnetzagentur's Annual Report; and
  • provision of information about the German rail market for the IRG-RAIL's Rail Market Monitoring Report.

All reports are currently published once a year.

Statistics and other business

This topic covers the collection, evaluation and summary of general market data, the operation of the Department's databases, and the maintenance of regular contacts, especially with associations and public authorities.

Long-term framework agreements

For information about long-term framework agreements please see:

Tracks/Long-term framework agreements.

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