IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/transa/v42y2008i10p1283-1294.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Assessing the technical efficiency, service effectiveness, and technical effectiveness of the world's railways through NDEA analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Yu, Ming-Miin

Abstract

This paper presents an approach to include both the unstorable feature of transportation service and the technological differences within railway companies in efficiency and effectiveness measurements. We explore efficiency and effectiveness for a group of 40 global railways in the year 2002, using traditional data development analysis (TDEA) and network data development analysis (NDEA). Comparing the results obtained from the NDEA model with those from the TDEA indicate that performance measures are quite different in terms of the magnitude, and even using different DEA type models to evaluate railway system performance does not distort the ranking of their performance. We also analyze the inter-related effects among three performance measures, finding that transportation service characteristics have positive effects on the evaluation of performance. Generally speaking, the NDEA model provides deeper insight regarding the sources of inefficiency and process-specific guidance to railway managers so as to help them improve their railway's performance.

Suggested Citation

  • Yu, Ming-Miin, 2008. "Assessing the technical efficiency, service effectiveness, and technical effectiveness of the world's railways through NDEA analysis," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 42(10), pages 1283-1294, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:transa:v:42:y:2008:i:10:p:1283-1294
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965-8564(08)00091-8
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fare, Rolf & Grosskopf, Shawna, 1996. "Productivity and intermediate products: A frontier approach," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 65-70, January.
    2. Rolf Färe & Shawna Grosskopf & Gerald Whittaker, 2014. "Network DEA II," International Series in Operations Research & Management Science, in: Wade D. Cook & Joe Zhu (ed.), Data Envelopment Analysis, edition 127, chapter 0, pages 307-327, Springer.
    3. Karlaftis, Matthew G., 2004. "A DEA approach for evaluating the efficiency and effectiveness of urban transit systems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 152(2), pages 354-364, January.
    4. Jain, Priyanka & Cullinane, Sharon & Cullinane, Kevin, 2008. "The impact of governance development models on urban rail efficiency," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 42(9), pages 1238-1250, November.
    5. Henry Tulkens, 2006. "On FDH Efficiency Analysis: Some Methodological Issues and Applications to Retail Banking, Courts and Urban Transit," Springer Books, in: Parkash Chander & Jacques Drèze & C. Knox Lovell & Jack Mintz (ed.), Public goods, environmental externalities and fiscal competition, chapter 0, pages 311-342, Springer.
    6. Charnes, A. & Cooper, W. W. & Rhodes, E., 1978. "Measuring the efficiency of decision making units," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 2(6), pages 429-444, November.
    7. Jonathan Cowie & Darinka Asenova, 1999. "Organisation form, scale effects and efficiency in the British bus industry," Transportation, Springer, vol. 26(3), pages 231-248, August.
    8. Rajiv D. Banker & Richard C. Morey, 1986. "Efficiency Analysis for Exogenously Fixed Inputs and Outputs," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 34(4), pages 513-521, August.
    9. Beasley, J. E., 2003. "Allocating fixed costs and resources via data envelopment analysis," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 147(1), pages 198-216, May.
    10. Perelman, Sergio & Pestieau, Pierre, 1988. "Technical performance in public enterprises : A comparative study of railways and postal services," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 32(2-3), pages 432-441, March.
    11. Bruno De Borger & Kristiaan Kerstens & Álvaro Costa, 2002. "Public transit performance: What does one learn from frontier studies?," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(1), pages 1-38, January.
    12. Nolan, J. F. & Ritchie, P. C. & Rowcroft, J. E., 2002. "Identifying and measuring public policy goals: ISTEA and the US bus transit industry," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 291-304, July.
    13. Kerstens, K., 1996. "Technical efficiency measurement and explanation of French urban transit companies," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 431-452, November.
    14. Chu, Xuehao & Fielding, Gordon J. & Lamar, Bruce W., 1992. "Measuring transit performance using data envelopment analysis," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 223-230, May.
    15. PERELMAN, Sergio & PESTIEAU, Pierre, 1988. "Technical performance in public enterprises," LIDAM Reprints CORE 797, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    16. Chambers, Robert G. & Chung, Yangho & Fare, Rolf, 1996. "Benefit and Distance Functions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 407-419, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chiu, Yung-ho & Huang, Chin-wei & Ma, Chun-Mei, 2011. "Assessment of China transit and economic efficiencies in a modified value-chains DEA model," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 209(2), pages 95-103, March.
    2. Huang, Wencheng & Shuai, Bin & Sun, Yan & Wang, Yang & Antwi, Eric, 2018. "Using entropy-TOPSIS method to evaluate urban rail transit system operation performance: The China case," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 292-303.
    3. Karlaftis, Matthew G. & Tsamboulas, Dimitrios, 2012. "Efficiency measurement in public transport: Are findings specification sensitive?," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 392-402.
    4. Zhang, Chunqin & Juan, Zhicai & Luo, Qingyu & Xiao, Guangnian, 2016. "Performance evaluation of public transit systems using a combined evaluation method," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 156-167.
    5. Mallikarjun, Sreekanth & Lewis, Herbert F. & Sexton, Thomas R., 2014. "Operational performance of U.S. public rail transit and implications for public policy," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 74-88.
    6. Mahmoudi, Reza & Emrouznejad, Ali & Shetab-Boushehri, Seyyed-Nader & Hejazi, Seyed Reza, 2020. "The origins, development and future directions of data envelopment analysis approach in transportation systems," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    7. Zhao, Y. & Triantis, K. & Murray-Tuite, P. & Edara, P., 2011. "Performance measurement of a transportation network with a downtown space reservation system: A network-DEA approach," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(6), pages 1140-1159.
    8. Cinzia Daraio & Marco Diana & Flavia Di Costa & Claudio Leporelli & Giorgio Matteucci & Alberto Nastasi, 2014. "Efficiency and effectiveness in the urban public transport sector: a critical review with directions for future research," DIAG Technical Reports 2014-14, Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering, Universita' degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza".
    9. Merkert, Rico & Mulley, Corinne & Hakim, Md Mahbubul, 2017. "Determinants of bus rapid transit (BRT) system revenue and effectiveness – A global benchmarking exercise," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 75-88.
    10. Pestana Barros, Carlos & Peypoch, Nicolas, 2010. "Productivity changes in Portuguese bus companies," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 295-302, September.
    11. Guillermo Díaz & Vincent Charles, 2016. "Regulatory design and technical efficiency: public transport in France," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 50(3), pages 328-350, December.
    12. de Borger, Bruno & Kerstens, Kristiaan & Staat, Matthias, 2008. "Transit costs and cost efficiency: Bootstrapping non-parametric frontiers," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 53-64, January.
    13. Cullinane, Kevin & Wang, Teng-Fei & Song, Dong-Wook & Ji, Ping, 2006. "The technical efficiency of container ports: Comparing data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier analysis," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 40(4), pages 354-374, May.
    14. Odeck, James, 2008. "How efficient and productive are road toll companies?: Evidence from Norway," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 232-241, July.
    15. Yu, Ming-Miin & Chen, Li-Hsueh & Hsiao, Bo, 2016. "Dynamic performance assessment of bus transit with the multi-activity network structure," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 15-25.
    16. Bhatia, Vinod & Sharma, Seema, 2021. "Expense based performance analysis and resource rationalization: Case of Indian Railways," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    17. Lampe, Hannes W. & Hilgers, Dennis, 2015. "Trajectories of efficiency measurement: A bibliometric analysis of DEA and SFA," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 240(1), pages 1-21.
    18. Chiou, Yu-Chiun & Lan, Lawrence W. & Yen, Barbara T.H., 2010. "A joint measurement of efficiency and effectiveness for non-storable commodities: Integrated data envelopment analysis approaches," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 201(2), pages 477-489, March.
    19. Cavaignac, Laurent & Petiot, Romain, 2017. "A quarter century of Data Envelopment Analysis applied to the transport sector: A bibliometric analysis," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 84-96.
    20. George E. Halkos & Nickolaos G. Tzeremes, 2015. "Measuring Seaports' Productivity: A Malmquist Productivity Index Decomposition Approach," Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, University of Bath, vol. 49(2), pages 355-376, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:transa:v:42:y:2008:i:10:p:1283-1294. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/547/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.