Evaluating the Performance of Public Transit Systems: A Case Study of Eleven Cities in China

Di Yao, Liqun Xu and Jinpei Li
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Di Yao: Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200030, China
Liqun Xu: Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200030, China
Jinpei Li: Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200030, China

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 13, 1-21

Abstract: This paper presents a super-efficiency network data envelopment analysis (SE-NDEA) model for 11 cities in China. The model focuses on measuring the performance of public transit system by integrating multiple stakeholders involved in the public transit system with the exogenous environment in which they operated. Thus, local authority, bus operators, passengers, uncontrollable environmental factors, and the externality of the public transit are all taken into account in the measurement framework and are both interrelated inputs and outputs. The measurement framework can simultaneously capture each public transit system’s production efficiency, service effectiveness, and operational effectiveness. Meanwhile, undesirable outputs, uncontrollable factors, and boundary-valued variables are considered. The paper evaluates the performance of public transit system of 11 Chinese cities from 2009 to 2016. The results reveal that the exogenous environment has a marked impact on the performance measurement of the public transit system. Super cities tended to perform better than mega cities, and mega cities tended to perform better than large cities. Furthermore, service effectiveness has a significantly positive correlation with production efficiency, and transit rail tends to perform better than the conventional bus. These findings have an important implication for China’s bus priority implementation and more general managerial insights for public transit development.

Keywords: public transit system; performance measurement; exogenous environment; data envelopment analysis (DEA); efficiency and effectiveness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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