Enhancing railway corridor governance: Cooperative game model

Abstract

Despite the EU's efforts to enhance the competitiveness of rail freight transport, the lack of coordination and cooperation among governments and infrastructure managers remains a significant barrier. Rail freight corridors, serving as critical arteries for transnational trade and economic integration, are particularly vital for strengthening rail's competitive position in European transport market. This paper proposes the application of cooperative game theory to address the coordination challenges among stakeholders within rail freight corridors. A cooperative game model is developed to evaluate the potential for improving corridor governance through the formation of coalitions among the involved countries. In addition to the Shapley value we introduce two novel allocation rules, termed the proportional rule and the adjusted proportional rule, which are specifically designed to address the railway freight corridor problem by linking allocation of coalition worth to countries' contributions to improving corridor competitiveness. The results of the model suggest that forming coalitions around shared objectives within the cooperative game framework significantly increases the revenues of infrastructure managers and ensures a fairer distribution of the coalition's worth among the participating countries.