Public Transport Contracts – Railways

In 2014, the Federation and all provinces ordered some 91.8 million train kilometres for about EUR 870.70 million via public transport contracts since the provided services could not be covered through tariff revenues and had to be funded by public co-financing to ensure the economical management of funds. The Federation contributed some EUR 688.42 million, the province of Lower Austria some EUR 41.18 million and the City of Vienna some EUR 11.12 million.

As regards procurement and the management of the public transport contracts, the Federation and the provinces established parallel structures. Consequently, trains that had been ordered by different local authorities based on separate public transport contracts ran on the same routes at different times. A joint and central management unit would be useful to tap into synergies.

When ordering the railway transport services, the Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology (BMVIT) and the provinces of Lower Austria and Vienna had to represent contradicting interests: as the buyer they had to ensure that services be purchased as economically as possible; as the owner of the key railway undertakings they had to ensure that they be operated without incurring losses. This tension resulted in the fact that the funding of public transport and the economic situation of the railway undertakings lacked transparency.

When the BMVIT ordered rail passenger transport services at the ÖBB-Personenverkehr AG, it exceeded the budget envisaged in the Federal Budget Estimates annually by an average of some EUR 27 million or some 4.7%.

The difference between the compensation of the minimum number of train attendant driving hours (some 270,000) and the actually compensated number (between some 630,000 and 920,000) accounted for up to EUR 45 million in the audited period.

Despite the fact that the electronic measurement systems in private railways to gauge whether the quality criterion of punctuality is met had not yet been implemented by 1 January 2014, the SCHIG mbH (railway infrastructure services company) made bonus payments of some EUR 575,155 for punctuality in 2014.