Measuring Transfer Efficiency of Urban Public Transportation Terminals by Data Envelopment Analysis
Publication: Journal of Urban Planning and Development
Volume 136, Issue 4
Abstract
The importance of a transportation terminal’s transfer efficiency to passengers is well known. However, it is still a problem of how to combine the various indicators into a single indicator that can be used to quickly compare transportation terminals’ transfer efficiency and identify those terminals in need of intervention. This paper presents a study that is reflective of such an effort. Using the transfer data obtained from 10 transportation terminals in Beijing, the individual performance measures were combined into a single comprehensive measure through the data envelopment analysis (DEA). Efficiency is allowed to be measured by DEA when decision making units have multiple inputs and multiple outputs. The input variables are the transfer area, operating expense, (the number of) staff in the terminal and the capacity of buses. The output variables are measured by the transfer safety and average transfer time of all the transfer passengers. This paper gained the efficiency order of the 10 transportation terminals in Beijing, and provides the potential improvements of each efficiency indicators. The findings and limitations of DEA are also discussed.
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Acknowledgments
The project was supported by the Doctoral Research Fund of Beijing University of Technology; and the Specialized Research Fund of Beijing Key Laboratory of Traffic Engineering (Grant No. UNSPECIFIEDJTP-2009-07). The writers gratefully acknowledge the support of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Planning. Our thanks also go to other members of the research team of public traffic of our laboratory, who played a great part in the effort to collect the required data for the study.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Urban Planning and Development
Volume 136 • Issue 4 • December 2010
Pages: 314 - 319
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: Mar 3, 2009
Accepted: Feb 15, 2010
Published online: Feb 17, 2010
Published in print: Dec 2010
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