Benchmarking Central European Rail Freight Transport

Strategies supporting sustainable development of rail freight transport are widely respected. Their future visions were accurately described in the EC's White paper from March 2011. Despite continuous investment and constant development of rail freight transport in Central Europe there is a significant role of limiting factors. For this reason the research question of this paper focuses on an analysis of available resources pointing to shortcomings and potential for performance improvement. Benchmarking is used as a tool to compare performance levels of rail freight carriers in Central European region and of best performing rail freight carriers in other EU states. The paper points out the persistent differences in efficiency of activities of rail freight transport providers operating in Central Europe.