Journal of Korean Society of Transportation ISSN:1229-1366(Print) 2234-4217(Online) 대한교통학회지

This study analyzes the efficiency of city bus routes operated in Suwon City by using data envelopment analysis (DEA). In order to analyze the efficiency of the routes, bus routes are divided into two groups: one for bus routes of intercity express type and intracity express type and another for bus routes of city bus type. The 15 intercity express bus routes and the 2 intracity express bus routes are regarded as the same group with a total of 17 routes, and the 70 city bus type bus type routes as another group. All of them are selected as the decision making units (DMU), and number of buses, intervals, bus stop, railway station, transportation facilities for elders and people with disabilities, redundancy ratio, and degree of curvature are selected as input factors. The number of passengers and revenue from bus operation are chosen as output factors. The result of analysis shows that, the economy of scale, it turns out that bus routes are operated efficiently. However, in terms of technical efficiency, it turns out that bus routes are operated inefficiently due to its scale of routes. For routes with increase returns to scale (IRS) revenues, it is shown that as production scale increases, the efficiency of routes would increase and production could increase dramatically. Hence, it is crucial to establish a plan for improving efficiency by maintaining an appropriate scale. With this result, it can be derived that the city bus route needs to be adjusted for much more efficient bus route operation in Suwon City.