Track access calibration
Track access is usually the largest infrastructure cost on a cross-border night train, and it is the best-sourced part of this model.
Provenance
Across twenty-eight countries: 35 values read from a named locator in a published document, 10 derived by documented arithmetic from sourced values, and 1 assumed with a stated band, drawn from 30 cited network statements and price lists.
That is the strongest ratio of any domain in the model. A wrong track access figure here is far more likely to reflect a changed tariff than a missing lookup.
All thirty documents are listed by country, with links, under track access, together with the cross-check sources behind the exchange-rate table and the escalation to 2032 prices.
What was collected
Every European infrastructure manager must publish a network statement setting out its charges. For each country the calibration extracts the terms a passenger night train would pay:
- a rate per train-kilometre, and a separate night rate where one exists
- a rate per tonne of train weight and kilometre
- in some countries, a rate per seat and kilometre
- a flat administrative addition per train-kilometre
- a fee per stop made
- a share of the ticket revenue earned in that country
- a congestion or peak surcharge, and the multiplier it applies
A country that does not levy one of these has no such term. It is recorded as not levied rather than as zero, because the two mean different things to anyone reading the data.
Judgement calls
Two kinds of gap needed a decision rather than a lookup.
Line categories. Several countries price by line category, so a mainline costs more than a branch. Mapping a routed path onto an infrastructure manager's own category list is not reliably possible from open data, so where charges depend on category the calibration makes a conservative fixed assumption: main international corridors are assumed to be in the higher-priced categories. Conservative here means do not understate the charge. Portugal's Norte and Sul mainlines are assumed category A on this basis, and the decision is recorded per country.
Peak surcharges and the day of the week. Austria and Switzerland charge extra for running through congested areas at commuter peak, on weekdays only. The tool knows a departure's clock time but not which day it runs, so the model charges the surcharge at its expected value, five-sevenths of the weekday rate. A route running Saturdays only is slightly overcharged here, and one running weekdays only slightly undercharged.
Currency and price year
Network statements are published in local currency and in different price years. Both conversions happen once, inside the calibration: currency at a pinned exchange-rate snapshot, then escalation to the 2032 evaluation year at 3% a year for track access. Everything downstream is plain euros.
What would change these numbers
New network statements, mostly. Tariffs are revised annually and this calibration is a snapshot, so a figure that is right today will drift. Every model version is dated, and a change to any of these values bumps that version.
Found a mistake?
This documentation describes a model that is still being built, and some of it will be wrong. If a number looks off, a source is missing, or an explanation does not hold up, tell us — it reaches the working group with the page you were reading.