Rapid-transit efficiency analysis with the assurance-region DEA method

Rapid-transit services are a relevant part of the transportation network in most cities of the world. An important aspect of transport policy is the supply of public urban transportation. In particular, it is of interest to determine whether rapid-transit operators are working in a technically and scale-efficient way. Production analysis of transit services has been characterized by the econometric study of average practice technologies. A more recent method to study such production frontiers is Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). It is a non-parametric method, but its application to rapid-transit, where the relations among technological variables are stricter, requires a previous structural analysis of the intervening inputs and outputs. DEA is employed in this paper to investigate the efficiency and returns to scale of 21 rapid-transit properties of the world. DEA was also used for the benchmarking of non-efficient rapid-transit properties, with special emphasis to the São Paulo subway system.