Performance Evaluation of Public Transportation System: Analyzing the Case of Dhaka, Bangladesh

Abstract

Performance evaluation of public transportation systems is an important prerequisite to making a rapidly growing city livable. Despite the presence of public transportation since the 1960s, few studies talk about the efficiency of transportation systems in cities. The objective of this research is to assess the performance of an existing system. Based on a set of performance measurements identified from the literature, we captured five categories: passengers’ and operators’ perspectives - service efficiency, system efficiency, cost efficiency, utilization efficiency, and network efficiency to evaluate public transit efficiency. The results indicated that the existing service quality in Dhaka is less satisfactory compared to other cities with system, network, and cost efficiency being below average. But utilization efficiency is better, which could result from the overuse of vehicles and workers being involved in operating them. Also, the most concerning issue with the existing transportation system is congestion. In terms of the strengths and weaknesses, we find that the implementation of metro rails, bus route restructuring, and a separate policy for the city’s public transportation system cast some hope in addressing some immediate problems in the rapidly growing city of Dhaka.