Efficiency and effectiveness in the urban public transport sector: A critical review with directions for future research

Abstract

This paper proposes a self-contained reference for both policy makers and scholars who want to address the problem of efficiency and effectiveness of local public transport (LPT), with special emphasis on urban transit, in a sound empirical way. Framing economic efficiency studies into a transport planning perspective, it offers a critical discussion of the existing empirical studies, relating them to the main methodological approaches used. The connection between such perspectives and Operations Research studies dealing with scheduling and tactical design of public transport services is also developed. The comprehensive classification of selected relevant dimensions of the empirical literature, namely inputs, outputs, kind of data analysed, methods adopted and policy relevant questions addressed, and the systematic investigation of their interrelationships allows us to summarise the existing literature and to propose desirable developments and extensions for future studies in the field

Bet big on doubles, bet smaller on triples. Exploring scope economies in multi-service passenger transport companies

“…The three output categories are: urban transit (yU), intercity transit (yI) and for-hire transit (yH). As shown by Daraio et al (2016), an array of demand-oriented measures, such as passenger-trips or passenger-kilometers, and supply-oriented measures, such as vehicle-kilometers, seat-kilometers or total-seat kilometers have been used in the literature. Our measure, vehicle-kilometers, is the most popular in the empirical cost analysis.…”

“…where C is the long-run cost of production, yi refers to outputs (in our three-output case i, j = U, I, H ), wr indicates factor prices (in our three-input case r, l = L, K, 6 For a more comprehensive review of the empirical literature dealing with the urban public transport sector, see Daraio et al (2016). 7 As stated by the European Commission: "Very little national statistics are available on long distance bus and coach services and in terms of both regulation and statistics, there is no distinction made between extra-urban services and local buses" (European Commission, 2009, p. 5).…”

“…16 Finally, the price of material and services (wMS) is the cost of fuel and 14 Data were gathered in teamwork with the two main Italian category associations: ANAV (Associazione Nazionale Autotrasporto Viaggiatori) and ASSTRA (Associazione Trasporti). 15 Daraio et al (2016), selected and reviewed 31 studies focusing on the cost function estimation of local public transport companies. As they reported in Table 6 (page 11), vehicles-kilometer was used as an output measure in 57% of the cases.…”

Key-Cost Drivers Selection in Local Public Bus Transport Services Through Machine Learning

“…This paper relates to a vast empirical research on costs in LPT services (see [4] for a critical review). A first bunch of papers deals with the LPT companies' cost structure, with a focus on the estimation of variable and total costs [5]- [7].…”

“…The proposed models could be an effective and simple tool for LAs to validate reserve prices in tender procedures. Detailed information about costs has been gathered in order to fairly compute the total economic costs of the LPBT services; the collected economic and transport data relates to LPBT companies producing more than 500 million of bus revenue kilometers (BRK) in Italy in 2011 (approximately 30% of the overall amount of BRK offered in Italy for bus LPT services).This paper relates to a vast empirical research on costs in LPT services (see [4] for a critical review). A first bunch of papers deals with the LPT companies' cost structure, with a focus on the estimation of variable and total costs [5]- [7].…”