Technical Efficiency of Urban Public Transport Undertakings in India: A Study with Special Reference to CSTC

Abstract

In most of the big cities in India, buses are mainly run by publicly owned State Transport Undertakings (STUs), many of which make losses due to some social obligations to be fulfilled. In this paper, the values of certain performance indicators showed that some undertakings were in a much better position as compared to others. The Calcutta State Transport Corporation (CSTC) in the state of West Bengal, one of the oldest STUs in India, exhibited quite a dismal performance. In such a scenario, a comparison was made between the technical efficiencies of CSTC and a few other STUs of India using stochastic frontier analysis. CSTC was found to have a very low technical efficiency, corroborating the results obtained in terms of the performance indicators.