Evaluation of efficiency and measures of improvement for Rail Freight Corridors in Europe

Sammanfattning: To be able to achieve the environmental goals of the European union according to the Green Deal, the transportation of freight with railways needs to be prioritized. Right now, a large portion of the pollution in the European Union comes from the transportation market. Rail is a green option for transporting goods and the European Union has implemented different measures to improve the mode share of rail. One of these measures was to implement a Regulation to improve the competitiveness of rail freight. An extension of this was to create Rail Freight Corridors throughout Europe. Despite all the actions to make rail a more competitive mode, it has not been able to strengthen its position in the transportation market. To strengthen the position, literature agrees that its effectiveness needs to improve. The aim of this thesis was to evaluate the efficiency of the Rail Freight Corridors with Data Envelopment. It was also to test potential measures to improve the competitiveness through a sensitivity analysis. The scope of the work was the Rail Freight Corridors in the railway network in Europe for the years of 2020 and 2021. The efficiency was evaluated with Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a non-parametric approach, which produces an efficiency index. The collected data was divided into inputs and outputs to fit the model with a logical method based on production theory, and then the selection was evaluated with Pearson correlation analysis. After the efficiency analysis, a sensitivity analysis was performed to evaluate the model and the indicators but also to test potential improvements measures. The main conclusions from the thesis were that four of the evaluated eight corridors were efficient in 2020 and 2021. Three corridors were non-efficient in 2020 and 2021, Rail Freight Corridor 8 was only non-efficient in 2021. The least efficient corridor in 2020 and 2021 was Rail Freight Corridor 6. The sensitivity analysis showed that the model was reliable but sensitive to data changes and lacked stability. The correlation analysis showed that there is correlation for all indicators with at least one other indicator, which suggest a good selection of inputs and outputs. As with regards to potential improvement measures it showed that finding ways to reduce the dwell time at border is important for the Rail Freight Corridors, especially with regards to “Administration”. It also showed that the most influential indicator in the model was “Punctuality at destination”, which was coherent with literature. This thesis contributes with a new approach to investigate the efficiency of Rail Freight Corridors and provides stakeholders with methodology and results of value. For future work, a two-staged DEA model, incorporation of other transportation systems, and analysis with dwell time parameters is proposed to further investigate the efficiency of rail freight.