Performance evaluation of bus routes: A provider and passenger perspective Chintan Sheth a , Konstantinos Triantis a, * , Dus ˇan Teodorovic ´ b,c a System Performance Laboratory, Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Virginia Tech., Northern Virginia Center, 7054 Haycock Road, Falls Church, VA 22043-2311, United States b Department of Civil/Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech., Northern Virginia Center, 7054 Haycock Road, Falls Church, VA 22043-2311, United States c Faculty of Transport and Traffic Engineering, University of Belgrade, Vojvode Stepe 305, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia Received 3 November 2004; received in revised form 21 June 2005; accepted 3 September 2005 Abstract In this paper, the provision of bus services along different routes that comprise a public transit network is assessed tak- ing into consideration, the service providers, the users and the societal perspectives. This model is based on Data Envel- opment Analysis (DEA) [Charnes, A., Cooper W.W., Rhodes, E., 1978. Measuring the efficiency of decision-making units. European Journal of Operational Research 2, 429–444] and derives from the Network Model in DEA [Fa ¨re, R., Gross- kopf, S., 2000. Network DEA. Socio-Economic Planning Sciences 34, 35–49] and Goal Programming in DEA [Athanas- sopoulos, A., 1995. Goal programming and data envelopment analysis (GoDEA) for target-based multi-level planning: allocating central grants to the Greek local authorities. European Journal of Operational Research 87, 535–550]. This pro- posed approach enables the decision maker not only to optimally allocate resources across the transit network but to achieve targets for societal variables that represent the environment in which the bus services are provided. Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: The provision of bus services; Transit performance measurement; Data envelopment analysis (DEA); Network DEA and goal programming in DEA 1. Background and context Most transit agency executives face three major obstacles as they strive to keep a handle on their service operations: information inundation, information isolation, and information indecision. In a nutshell, policy makers and executives frequently receive too much information from isolated sources which is completely devoid of practical guidance for service improvement. In order for transit agencies to improve service perfor- mance and in this context reduce operational costs, they must have an effective method of measuring and 1366-5545/$ - see front matter Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.tre.2005.09.010 * Corresponding author. E-mail address: triantis@vt.edu (K. Triantis). Transportation Research Part E 43 (2007) 453–478 www.elsevier.com/locate/tre