Exploring the Application of Data Envelopment Analysis in the Evaluation of Public Transport Organizations

Abstract

The work provides details on a study on performing a comparative analysis of productivity and efficiency of selected public transport organizations in India. The data envelopment analysis (DEA) method was used in this study using sub-routines specially developed in the open-source R programming environment used in statistical analyses. The DEA approach is a commonly adopted non-parametric method of analysis for the measurement of efficiency-related characteristics. Based on the availability and consistency of information, selected input and output data on 27 State Road Transport Undertakings (SRTUs) were used in this study. The scores of efficiencies were then computed using an input-oriented DEA model with constant return to scale. Finally, the analysis was used to distinguish between efficient and inefficient SRTUs based on weights assigned to peer units. The results of this study indicate that only 10 out of the 27 SRTUs performed well. It was also found that the performance parameters could be improved by reducing the quantity of input-related parameters in order to maintain the same level of output. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.