DEA for green intermodal freight transport efficiency evaluation: the case of South East Europe corridor

DEA (data envelopment analysis) is a non-parametric linear programming method for determining the relative efficiencies of a set of decision making units (e.g. public transport companies) with multi-inputs and multi-outputs. The advantage of using DEA is that it does not require any assumption on the shape of the frontier surface and it makes no assumptions concerning the internal operations of a DMU. It is very often used in the transport sector for estimating the efficiency of airports, ports, railways and public transport companies. In order to make better assessment of green intermodal freight transportation, the aim of this paper is to applied DEA method to evaluate the relative efficiency of two green intermodal freight transport (GIFT) corridors (IV,V) of South East Europe. Input variables considered in this DEA problem are relative unit cost, transport time, delay risk, CO2 and SO2 emissions. Frequency of regular service is output variable. The application of this method aims at the identification of strengths and weaknesses of each GIFT Corridor and will pinpoints the actions that should be taken in order to improve their operational status and their transformation to Green Corridors.