Measuring Transfer Efficiency of Urban Public Transportation Terminals by Data Envelopment Analysis

What Makes Urban Transportation Efficient? Evidence from Subway Transfer Stations in Korea

“…Amid the lack of research on this topic, Sun et al [10] is the only work to our knowledge that examined the transfer efficiency at transfer stations. Here, they utilize DEA to measure the performance of 10 large-scale transportation terminals in Beijing using the transfer area, operating expense, the number of staff in the terminal and the capacity of buses as the input variables and the transfer safety and average transfer time of all the transfer passengers as the output variables.…”

“…However, as this novel work examines multimodal terminals with a focus on transfers from or to buses, there are clear limitations to its direct application on the efficiency of transfer stations in the subway. Therefore, we propose to modify the research model of Sun et al [10] to present a framework for observing the efficiency of subway transfer stations as the first study of its kind in this field of research.…”

“…First, Sun et al [10] also set multimodal terminals as a single DMUs without separately measuring the individual flows of transfer. Second, the data on subway transfers often do not provide precise numbers for passenger flows by the direction of their transfer, as was the case with the data we received from Seoul Metro for Lines 1-4.…”

“…Previous studies have mainly focused on the operator as the subject of their studies, such as the corporation that runs or owns a subway or railway, when looking at the productivity or profitability of the subway system rather than looking at the transfer efficiency at the stations themselves [8,9]. There are a handful of studies on transfer efficiency in public transportation; however, Sun et al [10] is the only work to our knowledge on transfer efficiency of transfer stations, yet, even this study, looks at transfers from subway to bus at multimodal terminals and not in the specific subway system context.…”

“…Specifically, modifying the methodology proposed in Sun et al [10], we propose an efficiency index that significantly diverts from the previous study to fit the subway context as well as apply the more advanced bootstrap-based data envelopment analysis (DEA) to strengthen the applicability of our research. Using the bootstrap technique, we compare the transfer efficiencies of Seoul's subway transfer stations by their operating entities and demonstrate how the complexities involved in analyzing transfer efficiency can be narrowed in scope to derive meaningful implications.…”