Highlights ► Measures social productive efficiency of transport services in Japan. ► Life-cycle CO2 emission from transport service provision is captured in data. ► Inter-modal comparison of social efficiency between rail and air. ► Air transport has competitive advantage due to lower travel time cost. ► Rail has lower environmental damage even considering the infrastructure construction.
Abstract The environmental impact of CO2 emissions has attracted increasing attention in recent years, which has redefined the modal choice between air and rail transport. Transport service provision via railway involves less marginal environmental damage than air transport, yet it entails a higher emissions burden in its infrastructure construction stage. This paper empirically investigates the environmental burden of these two transport modes by taking into account the CO2 emissions from both transport service provision and infrastructure construction. Using a panel data set from 1999 to 2007 for three Japanese railway companies and the Japanese air transport industry, which are treated as decision-making units (DMUs), this paper estimates the social efficiency of these DMUs via a nonparametric productivity measurement method that incorporates economic bads as undesirable outputs. The aviation industry is shown to be efficient, whereas results for the railway industry are mixed: JR East is efficient, JR West is inefficient throughout the observation period, and JR Tokai substantially improved its efficiency during the period to become an efficient company in 2007.
Social efficiency benchmarking of Japanese domestic transport services: A comparison of rail and air
Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment ; 16 , 7 ; 554-561
2011-01-01
8 pages
Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
Social efficiency benchmarking of Japanese domestic transport services: A comparison of rail and air
Online Contents | 2011
|British Library Conference Proceedings | 1993
|Benchmarking of urban rail system
IuD Bahn | 2005
|Networks of Modernity - Rail Transport and Modern Japanese Literature
IuD Bahn | 1997
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