Application of DEA on the Comprehensive Evaluation for Variable Speed Limits

The socio-economic impact evaluation for Intelligent Transportation Systems(ITS) has important theoretic value and realistic sense for the implementation of ITS schemes. On the basis of a deep study on Variable Speed Limits (VSL) schemes impact on society, economy and environment, this paper presents a comprehensive model of data envelopment analysis (DEA) for the socio-economic impact evaluation of VSL schemes and an example is introduced based on simulated project. The evaluation results show that the established DEA model not only can differentiate priority order among VSL schemes according to their evaluation efficiency index but also can judge effectively the optimal speed-limit value under different traffic volume which makes the traveling vehicles acquire the optimal socio-economic beneficial result.