Efficiency of public passenger transport by rail in larger cities: European biased perspective

Transportation in larger cities is getting more important due to the reason of increasing population in cities and tightening global environmental demands. Besides pedestrian and biking alternatives, rail-based public transportation systems represent environmentally sustainable alternative to respond on these concerns. In this research work we analyse through four different efficiency measurement models (used space or service) 52 larger cities around the world concerning the rail-based public passenger transportation system. Findings indicate that very large cities are not necessarily most efficient in running public transportation system, and typically the highest performance is present in medium sized cities of evaluated database, and they are located in Central Europe. We find in this study that very large population and high urban population concentration represent the causes for low efficiency in mega-cities, among not particularly high or either exceptional usage of rail-based passenger transportation.