Evaluation of European railway companies efficiency: Application of a two-stage analysis

Abstract

The aim of this paper is efficiency assessment of railway companies from larger Europe during the most recent time period, taking into account different input-output configurations. For this aim, two-stage analysis is employed, where efficiency scores are obtained by DEA in the first stage, while in the second stage different statistical tests are conducted and Tobit analysis is used in order to evaluate influence of different environmental factors. It has been found that railways were oriented either on passenger or freight transportation, with only few companies demonstrating high performance in both modes. While companies from Western Europe showed higher performance than companies from Central and Eastern Europe regarding passenger and overall transportation, this is not the case concerning freight transportation. Except for few companies, there are no clear trends in performance during the period observed, in terms of constant efficiency level increase or decrease. Great impact of factors selection on results has been identified.

Simulation-Based Optimization of Transport Efficiency of an Urban Rail Transit Network

“…For research on the influencing factors of transport efficiency, the methods usually include qualitative analysis, Tobit method, multiple regression method, Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) and panel regression, etc. Kapetanovic et al [6] used the Tobit regression method and concluded that per capita GDP, population density, the existence of double/multi-track lines, and the percentage of electrified lines have significant positive effects on passenger transport efficiency. Catalano et al [7] provides information about the frequency of occurrence of different input measures in efficiency studies for railways.…”

“…(5) The newly built Line 6 can improve the scale efficiency of the system. (6) The newly built Changping Line cannot improve the scale efficiency of the system. (7) In combination optimization, under the conditions of original passenger flow and original departure interval, the shadow efficiency of the two schemes of removing the Changping Line and Line 6 is inconsistent with that of the single factor simulation experiment, and the relationship between shadow efficiencies also changes, which proves that the shadow efficiency is marginal efficiency, which is related to the starting point of the original scheme.…”

Analysis of the market structure of operator companies: methods and evaluation

“…Currently, many research in the field of transport use various methods and approaches to analyze the competitive environment and identify measures to strengthen the position in the market [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. For example, in [1] the authors use a stylized simulation model to study how open access competition affects tariffs, demand, supply, consumer surplus, and operator profits compared to a profit-maximizing monopoly and a situation where welfare.…”