EFFICIENCY OF URBAN PUBLIC TRANSIT: A META ANALYSIS
Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Date
2005
Subject Area
planning - methods, planning - surveys, place - urban, mode - mass transit, literature review - literature review
Keywords
Urban transit, Transit, Technical efficiency, Statistical methods, Statistical analysis, Regression analysis, Regression, Regions, Public transit, Parametric analysis, Methodology, Methodologies, Mathematical statistics, Mass transit, Local transit, Literature surveys, Literature reviews, Empirical methods
Abstract
This paper provides a statistical overview of the literature on public transit efficiency performance and statistically explains the variation in reported efficiency findings from these studies. Key concepts of efficiency analysis are introduced and the different frontier methodologies that have been used in the literature are discussed. The empirical part of this paper consists of a statistical summary of the literature as well as meta-regression analyses for different samples of the literature in order to identify key determinants of technical efficiency (TE) of public transit operators. For a broad sample of observations, significant and consistent effects of the type of database, region and output measurement method were found. For the sample of non-parametric studies, the authors found that the type of frontier assumptions also have an impact on the efficiency ratio. Further results show that there is no statistical difference in TE ratios between parametric and nonparametric studies. A positive univariate relationship between the number of inputs in the estimated specification and the efficiency ratio was also identified.
Recommended Citation
Brons, M, Nijkamp, P, Pels, E, Rietveld, P, (2005). EFFICIENCY OF URBAN PUBLIC TRANSIT: A META ANALYSIS. Transportation: Planning, Policy, Research, Practice, Volume 32, Issue 1, p. 1-21.
