The relative technical efficiency of European transportation systems concerning air transport and railways

Usually, the transportation sector's actors are evaluated within the national or company level through bunch indicators without emphasising performance as a whole system and the nature of these indicators (the division of outputs and inputs is blurred). In this research, we propose Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) efficiency models for passenger and freight transport concerning both air transportation and railways. Our analysis results regarding larger Europe show that efficiency differences exist mostly in railway operations, but specialisation among actors is existent in both transportation subsectors. In a correlation analysis between these subsectors, we find an interesting link with passenger transportation.