Study of high-speed rail infrastructure ownership

The separation of rail track infrastructure from train operations will improve profitability according to experience of occidental countries. This paper proposes a hybrid separation mode, which may be available for a high-speed railway on Beijing-Shanghai corridor in China, after comparing with vertically integrated mode and vertically separation mode. Under such a mode, a joint-venture company with equity from the main layers would be the owner of track. This would allow some of the benefits of vertical integration to be retained, whilst providing fair access to new operators. The conflicts of interest between the owners of track and their client operators are also discussed in detail.