This chapter first discusses the particular attributes of railways that make performance modelling difficult. It continues by looking at the value and shortcomings of the simple partial productivity measures of rail systems that have been commonly used in the past. It then considers total factor productivity measures, and the two main approaches discussed in Chapter 20 on productivity measurement; the index number approach and econometric estimation of cost or production functions. Following a section on alternative approaches to the measurement and explanation of variations in the performance of individual railways, it ends with a brief comment on the likely future development of methods for the measurement of the performance of railway companies.
Abstract