This follows a decision by the Administrative High Court in July and is the result of a complaint filed by open-access operator Westbahn against Schienen-Control’s decision.
According to Austrian and European legislation the charges for the minimum access package should not exceed the marginal costs of running a train. However, Austria’s infrastructure manger ÖBB Infrastructure had also included some fixed infrastructure costs necessary to maintain a line even if no trains run.
The regulator must now review all cost components again to check whether they are variable costs or shares of fixed costs. This will be a time consuming process and may take some time as it covers a long period.
It is expected that ÖBB Infrastructure will have to pay back part of the access charges for 2011-2017, and estimates vary from several hundred million euros to €1.5bn. However, the majority of the refunds will go to Austrian Federal Railways’ (ÖBB) passenger division and Rail Cargo Austria so that ÖBB Holding will only be affected by payments to open-access passenger and freight operators. Westbahn’s share of the refund could be up to €50m.
In July, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that Westbahn should not be charged extra for access to stations as this was included in the minimum access package under which Westbahn operates.
