Population size and transport company efficiency - Evidence from Czech Republic

The obligation to ensure transport accessibility of a territory in the Czech Republic is mandated by law. Services provided in the area of transport fall under the group of collectively- provided public goods and that is the reason for economic investigation of transport companies. These services cannot be provided efficiently with an eye on the profitability principle. The aim of this paper is to evaluate efficiency of management of 18 transport companies using a selected multi-criteria method. For this purpose, Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is chosen in combination with the Coefficient of Variance method (CV) as an objective method for determining the weight of indicators. Analysis by means of CV-TOPSIS technique is carried out in 2006 and 2016 using 5 indicators, such as sales or short-term liabilities. Based on the results, authors can aver that the number of residents, i.e. number of the users of transport services, is not a significant factor that would affect evaluation of transport companies' efficiency in the Czech Republic. At the same time, transport companies in larger cities provided public transport less efficiently. In other words, with the growth of population, the transport company's economic efficiency decreased significantly, irrespective of the size of the territory for which the service of public transport was provided.