Carriers must pay user fees for using the public railway infrastructure. Usage fee is intended to cover part of maintenance costs that the administrator of the public railway infrastructure has.
The legal foundation for determining and charging usage fees is in the Railway Transport Act, Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2015/909 of 12 June 2015 on the modalities for calculating costs that are directly incurred as a result of operating the train service, and in the Directive on allocating train paths, usage fee and efficiency regime on the public railway infrastructure.
Usage fee includes the minimum service bundle for access to the public railway infrastructure to which all applicants or carriers with train paths allocated are entitled.
The minimum service bundle includes:
- processing requests for allocating infrastructure capabilities,
- the right to use the infrastructure capabilities,
- using railway infrastructure, including switches and track connections,
- management, administration and signalization with management, dispatch and messaging and providing information on train drives,
- use of the charging system for electric haulage, where available, and
- all other information required for performing and providing transport services for which the infrastructure capabilities were allocated.
The amount of the usage fee for the minimum bundle of services for access to the public railway infrastructure and for access on the tracks to the facilities required for providing railway services shall not be higher than the costs caused directly in the provision of an individual service or during use of the infrastructure.
The amount of the usage fee and the methodology for calculating it is set by the administrator of the public railway infrastructure SŽ-Infrastruktura.
The methodology for charging the usage fee is published in the Network statement of the administrator of the public railway infrastructure.