Planning EG 4 Inland Waterways

The first two meetings of the working group will focus on methodological issues concerning the determination of the social marginal costs and what these mean for any implementation of pricing measures. The focus will be on wear and tear, congestion and environmental effects. In the third and fourth meeting of the working group the major barriers for implementing social marginal cost based pricing reforms in inland shipping will be identified, as well as critical success factors to break these. Important issues are institutional barriers, like the Mannheim convention, and acceptability barriers.

• EG4-1 “Overview and state-of-the-art”

• What should pricing be based on; on which externalities to focus?
• What are the possible directions for charging schemes reform?
• Review of national practices in terms of charging regimes and financing of infrastructures.

• EG4-2 “Costs measurement and accounting practices”
• Review of research on infrastructure cost calculation methodologies;
• Identification and measurement of the main external cost categories?
• What does social marginal cost mean in the inland shipping environment?

• EG4-3 “Impacts”
• What are the possible impacts for the sector (on traffic, on costs and revenues, on the broader economy, on equity, etc.)?
• What are the socio-economic impacts?

• EG4-4 “Implementation issues (enabling factors and barriers)”

• Choice of technology
• What are the barriers for implementing social marginal cost based pricing reforms: institutional, legal and acceptability?
• How to overcome these barriers?
• Review of previous seminars and agreement on overall conclusions
  

Meetings/Seminars