Measuring Railway Efficiencies with Consideration of Input Congestion

Erwin T. J. Lin^1*, Lawrence W. Lan², Jeng-Cheng Chang³

¹Department of Global Marketing and Logistics, MingDao University, Changhua.
²Department of Television & Internet Marketing Management, Ta Hwa Institute of Technology, Hsinchu.
³Department of Business Innovation and Development, MingDao University, Changhua.

DOI: 10.4236/jtts.2012.24034                

Abstract

Input congestion very likely existed in rail transport. However, early works measuring the rail transport efficiencies rarely took the input congestion into account; hence, the proposed strategies for enhancing efficiencies can be misleading. This study revisited the rail transport efficiencies with consideration of input congestion. We employed data envelopment analysis extension method to investigate the input congestion for some selected 24 European Union (EU) railways in 2006. The results indicated that there is no strong congestion in these 24 railways. However, 12 railways have been diagnosed with weak congestion in the available capacity of freight transport as well as the number of locomotives, 7 railways in the available capacity of passenger transport, and 4 railways in the number of employees. Based on our findings, the managerial implication is to contract the available capacity of freight transport (tonnages) as the most critical strategy, rather than laying-off the excess number of employees suggested by most previous studies, which did not consider the input congestion effects while measuring the rail transport efficiencies.

Keywords

Data Envelopment Analysis; Input Slack; Input Congestion; Rail Transport

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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