'1 actually think the Europeans, despite their lack of sophistication in access charging, are closer to the right way of doing this than we are in the UK', said Eurostar Chairman Richard Brown on October 19. 'The structures vary widely', he noted, but 'generally they are variable, what train operators pay, either per train-km or per train path.' 'Very few operators pay a fixed charge, whereas with the franchise system in the UK 80% to 90% of what a franchise pays is a fixed charge. 1 believe this is producing different behaviours in the UK, and is one of the factors that McNulty picked up. That in the UK train utilisation - either load factors or passengers per train - are significantly lower than most European benchmarks' (above).
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