A pilot model for the liberalization of the Spanish railway market based on combinatorial auctions

Abstract

The liberalization of the railway market in the European Union brings the need to define a competitive mechanism that allows the infrastructure manager to allocate the rights of use of railway segments to the new emerging train operating companies. For this allocation process, we propose the use of combinatorial auctions, a mechanism that has provided successful results in the liberalization of other markets such as the radio spectrum. In this context, the aim of this paper is to provide a high-level description of a pilot model for the liberalization of the Spanish railway market based on combinatorial auctions.