Strategies for the enhancement of rural railways

The provision of rural public transport has always been seen as a matter of competing for scarce public resources. The fundamental problem is that the demand for rural transport is low and the population is widely dispersed. Conventional public transportation solutions are not able to meet the demand efficiently. In this respect, railway transport proves to be particularly inefficient. In Spain there are approximately 2500 km of rural railway lines carrying low traffic volumes. These have traditionally been considered to be loss-making lines. Yet, in principle, this idea is incorrect. This paper looks at some of the techniques currently being successfully applied on rural railway lines that enable considerable savings on operational and maintenance costs to be made.