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

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Abstract

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 five systems should improve their management strategies, since their results are being supported by a favourable surrounding environment.

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Notes

  1. Other metro systems were initially considered but subsequently discarded from the database due to inconsistent and/or missing data.

  2. For some companies operating the metro and other transit systems, the published number of employees refers to the total labor force. In these cases, aiming to remove the number of employees associated with other transport modes, we estimated NE through a linear regression between the labor force and the metro rolling stock, using specific dummy variables for each company.

  3. GDP and DPP were converted at 2000 constant prices.

  4. By metro-like systems we intend urban rail systems which combine features of metro and commuter rail notwithstanding the existence of these latter systems in the same urban area (e.g. the RER in Paris is a suburban rail that operates similarly to a metro system within the core city limits, coexisting with the RATP metro and the SNCF Transilien commuter rail service).

  5. Modeling estimations were performed using the econometric software Limdep (Greene 2007).

  6. The results for the Glasgow metro correspond to the operational years of 1997 and 1998 (the only available data).

  7. The Helsinki metro is not represented in Fig. 2 because its efficiency was not estimated due to the lack of data about CRKM.

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  1. Research Centre for Territory, Transports and Environment, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, s/n, 4200-465, Porto, Portugal

    António Lobo & António Couto

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  1. António Lobo
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  2. António Couto
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Correspondence to António Lobo.

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Lobo, A., Couto, A. Technical Efficiency of European Metro Systems: The Effects of Operational Management and Socioeconomic Environment. Netw Spat Econ 16, 723–742 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11067-015-9295-5

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