ABSTRACT
Experience of deregulation, in various modes and in a number of countries, is sufficient to form the base line for considering the future. In the case of airline deregulation in the United States it is now plain that the modal interface, defined as terminal infrastructure, is a potential cause of distortion. This may be seen to apply equally to the issue of track costs and pricing, currently a renewed topic for debate in the United Kingdom; the present author (Hibbs, 1982) stressed that some form of road-use pricing was a sine qua non for the deregulation of urban bus services. The issue thus raised must form the underpinning of any analysis of the prospects for deregulation itself.
