High speed railway productivity : how does organizational restructuring contribute to HSR productivity growth?

The institutional reform of Japan National Railway (JNR) in 1987 has been considered as a great success. After the Japanese railway reform, European countries introduced vertical separation management. However, the question whether the new companies’ railway business has been improved by the privatization and vertical separation is still not well known. To evaluate the effect of the privatization and vertical separation, this thesis applied “productivity analysis”. First, we set Tokaido Shinkansen and the Paris-Lyon line as our research object because that these lines introduced the latest technology when it had been constructed. This means the technological development which increases the productivity has been very limited. Second, these lines have been profitable railway lines for a long time. This thesis used multi-factor productivity (MFP). We set passenger-km and revenue as output separately, and personnel, non-personnel, and capital related expenses as input data. As a result, this thesis found that the JNR privatization has contributed to increase MFP of Tokaido Shinkansen after 1987. This thesis reviewed the previous research. As a result, we figured out that their research model has difficulties showing the effect of introducing the vertical separation. From the Swedish railway data, we judged even the small market competition has more relationship with increased productivity than the style of vertical separation. We believed that the future NEC HSR should introduce private sector’s funds, and be operated by private sectors with competition within operators. Thesis Supervisor: Joseph M. Sussman Title: JR East Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Engineering Systems