In the last fifteen to twenty years, the railway industry worldwide has experienced big challenges and changes.
In Latin America, Canada, sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, UK and Estonia, private sector participation in the railway industry has increased substantially. Virtually all rail freight activity on the American continent is now carried out by the private sector (either through private ownership or by long-term concession), though most urban and long-distance passenger trains remain publicly owned and operated.
In Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the change has not been one of ownership but of transition from roles mandated by a centrally planned economy to new roles which depend on market forces and management competence. Moreover, the ending of political unions of the USSR, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia led to the emergence of over twenty newly independent national railway companies, some of which (Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine) may be counted individually as some of the world's largest railway businesses. The railways in transition countries have faced momentous changes in the scale, nature and direction of traffic demands attending the transition to market economies, with dire financial, employment and investment consequences in many cases. Some are now experiencing a resurgence of actual and potential demand for use of rail infrastructure and rollingstock assets which have, however, seriously deteriorated through the transition period.
In the European Union, while public ownership and operations remain the norm, a new model of railway industry organisation has taken root. New policies promulgated in a series of European Commission Directives and Regulations have resulted in member states adopting various degrees of separation of railway infrastructure from train operations, alongside the implementation of defined access rights for third party train operating companies. The influence of these ideas has been wider than just in member states, with similar elements evident in new rail policies in countries as disparate as Russia, Australia and Turkey.
In China, the staggering rate of economic growth in recent years has imposed freight and passenger demands on a relatively sparse network which, despite declining mode share, has led to the highest average rail traffic densities in the world. The network enhancement programme that has been adopted by the Government presages the biggest burst of railway building activity since the nineteenth century, with multiple objectives of increasing capacity, extending the network to more remote areas and enhancing service quality.
All these and other examples add up to an industry which exists globally, but within which the railways of individual countries and regions face disparate transport markets, policy environments and financial constraints. But what has all this to do with the World Bank?
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