Bundling Road and Railway Infrastructure Operators: Analysis of the Impact on Efficiency
Publication: Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 29, Issue 1
Abstract
With the increase in the complementarity of road and railway systems and a growing integration of logistical chains, there is an urgent need to coordinate the management of these two often-independent systems. Portugal has adopted a more radical approach, and with the argument of capturing synergies and reducing costs, merged the road and railway companies, creating the largest Portuguese infrastructure manager, responsible for overseeing the entire road and railway network. This research analyzes from an efficiency perspective the effects of such a policy option. The methodology used was to calculate several scores (using data envelopment analysis), and analyze the impact of a number of external factors [e.g., gross domestic product (GDP) growth, employment, financial crisis, and so on], and policy options (the merger itself), on those scores through multiple regressions. The results show that the merger had a positive impact on efficiency. The merger also improved the overall performance toward negative economic cycles, thus increasing its economic resilience.
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Data Availability Statement
The efficiency scores used in this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
This research was developed under a project funded by Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos (FFMS), on the “Efficiency and productivity of transport infrastructure systems.” The authors are grateful to FFMS for providing such support. This paper is an improved version of the preliminary results published in the projects’ report. Joaquim Miranda Sarmento gratefully acknowledge financial support from FCT—Fundação para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (Portugal), national funding through Research Grant UIDB/04521/2020. Carlos Oliveira Cruz and Vitor Faria e Sousa are grateful for the Foundation for Science and Technology’s support through funding UIDB/04625/2020 from the research unit CERIS.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 29 • Issue 1 • March 2023
Copyright
© 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Oct 22, 2021
Accepted: Nov 9, 2022
Published online: Jan 4, 2023
Published in print: Mar 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Jun 4, 2023
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Analysis (by type)
- Benefit cost ratios
- Business management
- Data analysis
- Economic factors
- Engineering fundamentals
- Financial management
- Highway and road management
- Highway transportation
- Infrastructure
- Managers
- Methodology (by type)
- Personnel (type)
- Personnel management
- Practice and Profession
- Rail transportation
- Regression analysis
- Research methods (by type)
- Statistical analysis (by type)
- Transportation engineering
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