Assessing Performance under Regulatory Evolution: A European Transit System Perspective

Abstract

Assessing the performance of transit systems operating under different regulatory regimes is a topic of considerable interest in the literature. The goal of this paper is to investigate the performance characteristics and factors affecting this performance for European transit systems operating in vastly different regulatory environments. The initial results of data envelopment analysis application indicate that privately operated systems tend to be more efficient while publicly operated systems tend to be more effective; transport operators in cities where open entry form of competition has been introduced were found to perform both efficiently and effectively. Further, as the Tobit regressions focused on the effect of ownership indicate, most systems in the sample demonstrate a positive trend in both efficiency and effectiveness, a finding with important practical implications for financially strained systems.