06 November 2020

What is the best way to handle the conflicts that can appear in allocation of railway capacity after market deregulation? This is a question that Abderrahman Ait Ali has sought out to answer in his dissertation Methods for Capacity Allocation in Deregulated Railway Markets.

Abderrahman Ait Ali at a railway station
For a long time, Sweden along with many other countries had railways operating under a national monopoly with regards to passenger as well as freight traffic. In the end of the 20:th century, challenges in form of efficiency and cost problems were rising, and because of this the railway monopoly was reformed so that infrastructure management was separated from the operative train service. This separation opened up the railway as a new market where new entrants are allowed to compete, a procedure known as deregulation.

By deregulating their railways, governments aim to reduce public expenditures, increase service quality, and improve system efficiency. For this to succeed, there is still need for instruments to intervene. An important element in this context is the allocation of railway capacity.

–The previously closed internal capacity allocation, within monopolistic national railway companies, needs to be replaced with a more transparent allocation of available capacity to the different (often competing) companies in the market.. This has to be done without decreasing efficiency. This task is the main problem that I attempt to address in my thesis, says Abderrahman Ait Ali (or Abdou, as he is called).

Abdou is a PhD student in Infra Informatics within the Division of Communications and Transport Systems (KTS), Department of Science and Technology (ITN). He is also a research assistant at The Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI). The public disputation will be held online on Monday November 16:th at 13:15.

More information

Latest news from LiU

LiU receives mark of excellence from EU

Linköping University has been awarded the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research Award. It is a mark of excellence that shows that the university is making systematic efforts to improve the working conditions of researchers.

Students taking the course Scholars at risk student led workshop

Academic freedom in practice

The group of master’s students on the Ethnicity and Migration programme at LiU are unique. They are the first in Sweden to take a university course in how to create a campaign in support of an imprisoned researcher and for academic freedom.

Portrait of man by the stream

Mathias Fridahl nominated to the Swedish Climate Policy Council

Mathias Fridahl, researcher at Linköping University, has been nominated to the Swedish Climate Policy Council, a government agency that evaluates how the government's policies align with Sweden's climate goals.