Railways in Developing Countries : A Global Review

As a green mode of transportation, railways have an important role to play in decarbonizing transport through shifting transport from more polluting modes of transport such as road and air. Railways can enable economic growth, which in turn generat...

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Main Author: World Bank
Format: Report
Language:English
Published: Washington, DC: World Bank 2022
Subjects:
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099515004292230157/P1766680d0330a0a10ba540e118a9f4da59
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37394
id okr-10986-37394
recordtype oai_dc
spelling okr-10986-373942022-05-25T21:18:23Z Railways in Developing Countries : A Global Review World Bank TRANSPORTATION GREEN TRANSPORTATION RAIL TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE As a green mode of transportation, railways have an important role to play in decarbonizing transport through shifting transport from more polluting modes of transport such as road and air. Railways can enable economic growth, which in turn generates increasing transport demand, while keeping greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions low. However, in many parts of the world, railways have lost traffic and market share to air and road transport modes. As countries seek to reduce their GHG emissions, while still delivering on economic growth, many are rethinking the role of rail. Many developing countries have existing railway networks, which will provide the starting point for efforts to increase rail in the transport mix. This report provides a basic stocktaking of those railways, explaining the industry structure and the current situation. Basic data on network size; volume; passenger fares and freight tariffs; labor productivity; network density; and perceived service quality assets, traffic, pricing and staffing have been compiled into the Developing Country Rail Database, which could be useful for analysis and comparisons across regions. The data have been collected from various public sources—annual railway or regulator reports and/or national statistical annuals. Most data are for 2018. The report covers railways providing services to the general public in 77 countries. Not included are the railways in most higher income countries (North America, Europe, Australasia, and northeast Asia), private mining railways and China, whose railway network has been covered in numerous other reports. The information shared in this report is presented in seven regional summaries, which group together railways sharing a common geographic area and other characteristics: South America; Sub-Saharan Africa; South Asia; Southeast Asia; the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Mongolia; and the Middle East. These summaries include basic data on institutional arrangements. 2022-05-04T22:06:40Z 2022-05-04T22:06:40Z 2022-04-19 Report http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099515004292230157/P1766680d0330a0a10ba540e118a9f4da59 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37394 English CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank Washington, DC: World Bank Report Publications & Research
repository_type Digital Repository
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution Digital Repositories
building World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection World Bank
language English
topic TRANSPORTATION
GREEN TRANSPORTATION
RAIL
TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE
spellingShingle TRANSPORTATION
GREEN TRANSPORTATION
RAIL
TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE
World Bank
Railways in Developing Countries : A Global Review
description As a green mode of transportation, railways have an important role to play in decarbonizing transport through shifting transport from more polluting modes of transport such as road and air. Railways can enable economic growth, which in turn generates increasing transport demand, while keeping greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions low. However, in many parts of the world, railways have lost traffic and market share to air and road transport modes. As countries seek to reduce their GHG emissions, while still delivering on economic growth, many are rethinking the role of rail. Many developing countries have existing railway networks, which will provide the starting point for efforts to increase rail in the transport mix. This report provides a basic stocktaking of those railways, explaining the industry structure and the current situation. Basic data on network size; volume; passenger fares and freight tariffs; labor productivity; network density; and perceived service quality assets, traffic, pricing and staffing have been compiled into the Developing Country Rail Database, which could be useful for analysis and comparisons across regions. The data have been collected from various public sources—annual railway or regulator reports and/or national statistical annuals. Most data are for 2018. The report covers railways providing services to the general public in 77 countries. Not included are the railways in most higher income countries (North America, Europe, Australasia, and northeast Asia), private mining railways and China, whose railway network has been covered in numerous other reports. The information shared in this report is presented in seven regional summaries, which group together railways sharing a common geographic area and other characteristics: South America; Sub-Saharan Africa; South Asia; Southeast Asia; the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Mongolia; and the Middle East. These summaries include basic data on institutional arrangements.
format Report
author World Bank
author_facet World Bank
author_sort World Bank
title Railways in Developing Countries : A Global Review
title_short Railways in Developing Countries : A Global Review
title_full Railways in Developing Countries : A Global Review
title_fullStr Railways in Developing Countries : A Global Review
title_full_unstemmed Railways in Developing Countries : A Global Review
title_sort railways in developing countries : a global review
publisher Washington, DC: World Bank
publishDate 2022
url http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099515004292230157/P1766680d0330a0a10ba540e118a9f4da59
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37394
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