Efficiency and productive slacks in urban transportation modes: A two-stage SDEA-Beta Regression approach

The performance of urban transportation modes is a critical issue for people's mobility. This research analyses various transportation modes in 285 cities across the world from 2009 to 2012, exploring efficiency levels with a focus on productive capacity slacks. The idea is to better apprehend the resilience of different transport modes in terms of absorbing demand shocks, shedding some light not only in terms of the intrinsic characteristics of each mode but also on the demographic context. A novel approach derived from a two-stage combination of Stochastic Data Envelopment Analysis (SDEA) and Beta Regression was used to support the findings, which indicate the concentration of productive slacks on heavy metro and the need of specific solutions for mid-sized cities. Policy implications are then derived.