Generally, the development process of the railway transport system is determined by the market pull effects initiated by the economy and society and the market push effects induced by technological progress. The policymakers can provide a balance between these two effects; this results in more effective, safer, and greener future railway systems. In developing countries, the railway systems lag compared to the developed economies. Therefore, the supporting management tools and legal supports for policymakers and strategic management play significant roles in the development of future sustainable transport systems. This paper deals with such required tools and the potential legal framework that support the development of sustainable railway systems in developing countries. The major novelty and advantages of the introduced methodology is the harmonised interaction between society, economic demands, technological development, and regulation. The proposed tools are applied to the Kenya rail system development.

Forecasted/projected rise of impacts in modes of transportation has necessitated a new rethinking of the evaluation of total impact. While most researchers deal with defined parts (like environmental impact) of the total impact. The total impact calculation methodology includes: (1) analysis of all the impacts (environmental impact, safety and security, costs, cost benefits and sustainability), (2) evaluation on the transportation system level, (3) as their total value (including all the related sub-systems and elements, i.e. transport infrastructure, transport flow control), (4) generation of total impact index. Such an index might be called as transport total sustainability index. The paper defines the Total Impact Performance Index (TIPI) evaluating the total impact in the form of generalized (summarized) costs, specifies its calculation methodology, develops a simplified Excel based calculation methods. It aims to demonstrate the applicability of this methodology, which involves evaluation of impacts in more detailed forms, two parts calculation methods namely impact of road transport safety aspects and impact of the railway transport. Finally, some selected results of the applied new index calculation and developed methodology are introduced and analysed.