Economies of scale and density in urban rail transport: effects on productivity

Graham, Daniel J.; Couto, António; Adeney, William; Glaister, Stephen

doi:10.1016/s1366-5545(03)00017-6

“…Graham et al (2003) created a parametric model based on the Cobb-Douglas production function to estimate the elasticities of capital and labor inputs, using a cross-sectional database with 99 observations distributed by 17 networks of suburban rail and metro. These estimates were applied to the time-series data of each system to decompose the output and the productivity growth, regarding the study of scale economies.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Technical Efficiency of European Metro Systems: The Effects of Operational Management and Socioeconomic Environment

Lobo

¹

,

Couto

²

2015

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This study focuses on the relationship between the operational performance of metro systems and their socioeconomic contexts. We use a two-stage methodology applied to a sample of 17 European metro systems. First, we apply a stochastic frontier approach to establish the optimal production function and to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness levels of each firm through offer and demand-characterizing indicators, respectively. Only internal production factors are included in the first stage of this analysis. In a second stage, we use a similar modeling approach, but considering an additional set of variables characterizing the socioeconomic environment of the urban areas in which metro systems operate. This method allows observing the effects on operational performance measurements due to the inclusion of external factors, and consequently, drawing some conclusions on the technical efficiency of metro systems and their operations in beneficial or adverse surrounding environments. Different scores resulting from both perspectives evidence the contributions of the socioeconomic factors to improve the reliability of performance measurements and to reduce false inefficiencies. The results show that 12 of the analyzed systems are being affected by an unfavourable socioeconomic environment and/or their network suffers from some adequacy problems with regard to demand. The remaining 5 systems should improve their management strategies, since their results are being supported by a favourable surrounding environment.

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“…Signalling Other Equipment Metros exhibit 'strong returns to density' (Graham et al, 2003): maximising capacity can increase efficiency and reduce subsidy requirements for metros in large cities with very high levels of passenger demand. Other research (Melo et al, 2011) has shown that increasing available line capacity (e.g.…”

Section: Rolling Stockmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The economics and efficiency of metros improves significantly the greater the extent to which fixed costs are met with increasing levels of capacity and revenue (Graham et al, 2003).…”

Section: Crowdingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring and Valuing Convenience and Service Quality

Anderson

¹

,

Condry

²

,

Findlay

³

et al. 2013

International Transport Forum Discussion Papers

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The Members of the Forum are: Albania, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, FYROM, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States. Terms of use: Documents inThe International Transport Forum's Research Centre gathers statistics and conducts co-operative research programmes addressing all modes of transport. Its findings are widely disseminated and support policymaking in Member countries as well as contributing to the annual summit. Discussion PapersThe International Transport Forum's Discussion Paper Series makes economic research, commissioned or carried out at its Research Centre, available to researchers and practitioners. The aim is to contribute to the understanding of the transport sector and to provide inputs to transport policy design. The Discussion Papers are not edited by the International Transport Forum and they reflect the author's opinions alone.The Discussion Papers can be downloaded from: www.internationaltransportforum.org/jtrc/DiscussionPapers/jtrcpapers.htmlThe International Transport Forum's website is at: www.internationaltransportforum.org ABSTRACTOrigin-destination demand, trip patterns, pricing and transport networks alone cannot explain passenger demand for public transport modes. Other factors of convenience and service quality play a key role in influencing demand and mode choice but they are often more complex and harder to define, measure and value. This paper argues that the good measurement of public transport convenience and service quality is a pre-requisite to its valuation and ensuring more optimal policy and management actions to minimise passengers' generalised time.The paper focusses necessarily on the urban public transport operator and its measurement of service quality. We review the practical experience gained from over 20 years of international benchmarking with more than 50 metro, bus and suburban rail operators in large cities around the world. Specifically, we review the current standards and practices from the urban railway industry in measuring service quality and provide...

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“…In fact, a concentration of smaller firms towards larger units can be observed in countries that have liberalized their public bus sectors, such as the UK (Cowie, 2002). Graham et al (2003) who examined economies of scale and density in 17 urban rail transport systems around the world suggest constant returns to scale but increasing returns to density.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Next Stop: Restructuring? A Nonparametric Efficiency Analysis of German Public Transport Companies

Hirschhausen

¹

,

Cullmann

²

2008

SSRN Journal

1

0

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractIn this paper, we present a nonparametric comparative efficiency analysis of 179 communal public transport bus companies in Germany (1990Germany ( -2004. We apply both deterministic data envelopment analysis (DEA) and bootstrapping to test the robustness of our estimates and to test the hypothesis of global and individual constant returns to scale. We find that the average technical efficiency of German bus companies is relatively low. We observe that the industry appears to be characterized by increasing returns to scale for smaller companies. These results would imply increasing pressure on bus companies to restructure.

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Economies of scale and density in urban rail transport: effects on productivity

Cited by 38 publications

References 3 publications

Technical Efficiency of European Metro Systems: The Effects of Operational Management and Socioeconomic Environment

Technical Efficiency of European Metro Systems: The Effects of Operational Management and Socioeconomic Environment

Measuring and Valuing Convenience and Service Quality

Next Stop: Restructuring? A Nonparametric Efficiency Analysis of German Public Transport Companies

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