Competition in the railway passenger market in the Czech Republic

Approaches to Czech Passenger Railway Market Liberalisation

“…Dominantní ČD informace pro jednotlivé trati nezveřejňují, ale neoficiálně jsou také ve ztrátě. Mezi další problematické důsledky fungování neregulované konkurence na trati Praha-Ostrava patří snížení průměrné délky vlaku, kongesce na železniční infrastruktuře a zpomalování regionální dopravy v okolí Prahy a Ostravy [Tomeš et al, 2014].…”

The impact of market opening on the supply of interregional train services

“…Competitive tendering is widely used for regional services in Sweden and many other countries, and is the general model in Great Britain also for interregional services. Open access is rarer for interregional passenger services, but there are some cases in for example Germany and Great Britain, as well as services in Austria, Italy (Lalive and Schmutzler, 2008;Nash, 2010;Nash et al, 2013;Alexandersson and Rigas, 2013;Finger, 2014;Bergantino et al, 2015) and the Czech Republic (Tomeš et al, 2014).…”

Role of railways in empowering travelers: A case study from the Czech Republic

“…Even after 10 years of liberalizing efforts, the market share of the private players in the passenger railway segment (as of 2011) was found to be negligible, at 1.4% of the incumbent Č D (Annual report Č D, 2012), which is the only recipient of state subsidy to intercity transport. Nevertheless, the Prague-Ostrava railway route has been reasonably successful in attracting open-access competition between the state and private railway operators (Tomeš et al, 2014). Before trying to understand the power dynamics between the railway operators (service providers) and travelers (service receivers), it is essential to understand the background of the three Czech railway operators operating under the open-access competition in the route.…”

“…They were reasonably successful in gaining quick market attention and wallet share of the passengers from the incumbent Č D. A major indication of this was their growing seat occupancy figures, which were in the range of 80-86% from the very first day of their operations (Urbánek, 2012). The dominant market leader, Č D, on the other hand, tried to keep the growing competition at bay by using its power to control the time of operations, service limitations (Contiguglia, 2011) and suspected predatory pricing (Tomeš et al, 2014). During the price war, fares in the Prague-Ostrava line fell to 25% of the existing fares, making travelers enjoy the best prices and services ever.…”

“…Source:Tomeš et al, 2014 Note: All services on the route included, i.e. not only Prague-Ostrava direct services.…”