Abstract: this article investigates the impact of infrastructure-related costs on the cost price, tariffs, and financial bottom line of the JSC “Russian Railways”. To illustrate the current situation, this article considers two types of transport: railway and road. In a unified transportation system of any given country, each of the two has its own function, which is determined by their objective peculiarities and the ability to perform transportation tasks.
One of the issues put forward for discussion in this article is the analysis of the volumes of transportation delivered by the two modes of transport in comparison with their objective technical and technological features, as well as with the existing protocols for financing transportation activities in terms of the infrastructural component of transportation costs. For these purposes, it is common practice in economic analysis to use such cost indicators as return on assets and capital intensity of transportation, which demonstrate the ratio between the volume of transportation in both physical or monetary terms and the transportation network maintenance costs. The index of depreciation intensity of transportation is also used; it allows factoring the infrastructural component into the transportation network maintenance costs. However, in the currently used statistical reporting and the structure of reports on economic activities of JSC “Russian Railways”, Rosavtodor and other organizations, the necessary information to enable such a comparative analysis is not available.
What draws particular attention is the existing structure of sources of financing the costs incurred by the road and railway transport and the mechanism used to include these costs into the cost price of transportation. This article analyzes the degree to which the railway carrier is discriminated as compared with the road transport and the impact it produces on the technical conditions of the infrastructure of the railway transport.
Keywords: infrastructure component, property value, sources of financing, cost, price, tariffs, maintenance costs, construction, reconstruction, extra-budgetary sources of financing, federal budget expenditures, investments, strategy of Russian Railways, inflation