Title: Factors affecting performance of urban bus transport systems in India: A Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) based approach
Abstract: City bus systems in India have been witnessing a decline in service consumption and revenue despite having a high proportion of transit dependent passengers. Improving their performance and encouraging higher transit ridership are required for Indian cities to meet their mobility demands in a resource efficient manner. We present an objective framework to measure efficiencies of these systems and to carry out a disaggregated analysis of the key internal and external variables impacting their efficiency. A Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) based approach was adopted for benchmarking the performance of eight city bus services. Three categories of performance efficiency i.e. service supply, consumption and revenue were measured using relevant input and output variables derived for the seven year study period between 2009-10 and 2015-16. The analysis identifies the best and least performing cities in each category and the potential reduction in resource consumption to improve their efficiency. Regression analysis of these efficiencies was carried out to establish correlation with external variables representing city size, land-use development characteristics and economic performance. The analysis identified low service consumption even in cities with high supply and revenue efficiency, highlighting the need for improved planning that enables demand oriented services. Cities also need to improve their service supply and revenues adequately to be efficient even as the cities grow in size and economy. The findings from this study provide policy and planning inputs to improve bus systems in other developing countries with similar public transport systems, city development and mobility characteristics.