BOB - Benchmarking of Benchmarking
Overview
Background & policy context:
It is widely recognised that there is a growing need to improve the quality, efficiency, safety and sustainability of the European transport system. BOB - an accompanying measure under the EC's Fifth Framework Programme - acts as a 'laboratory' to test the recommendations produced by the BEST network.
The BEST project (2000-2003) aimed at sharing expertise and experiences with transport benchmarking among policy makers, the transport sector and experts.
Objectives:
The overall objective of BOB was to assess, by means of practical pilot studies, how performance measures and benchmarking can support the development and implementation of the various elements of a European sustainable transport policy. The three topics addressed by the pilots were Passenger Railways, Professional Road Transport Safety, and Airport Accessibility.
Rail
The objective of this pilot study was to assess to what extent benchmarking can be used to improve the implementation of key objectives to increase the effectiveness of railway services, both from the point of view of the operator and as an instrument for national or regional transport authorities. This should allow these stakeholders to achieve sustainable mobility through attracting more passengers to rail and securing value for public money as well as supporting investment in the system.
Air
The overall objective of the pilot was to assess the use of benchmarking as a tool to improve airport accessibility. In particular, the results of the pilot were used to identify effective policy measures for ensuring sustainable airport accessibility. Furthermore, the pilot acted as a laboratory to test the recommendations produced by BEST - Benchmarking European Sustainable Transport - a project related to BOB under the European Union's Fifth Framework Programme for research and development 1.
Participants that contributed to the pilot included representatives of airports from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, and representatives of ministries of transport in Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, as well as a local public authority in Poland. The Airports Council International - Europe (ACI Europe) and the International Air Rail Organisation (IARO) were also involved in the pilot.
Road
To assess how far benchmarking can be used to improve policy at national and European level aiming at a higher road safety performance of professional road transport in particular and consequently the sustainability of road transport as a whole.
Two main items were preselected:
- professional driver training (road safety policy) and
- safety culture.
For these two items the benchmarking process was worked out, with a final report being the outcome of numerous discussions between professionals over the best way to benchmark these two items.
Methodology:
Rail
The steps for a normal benchmarking exercise were followed for the railway case:
- Identification of areas for benchmarking;
- Identification of relevant dimensions;
- Identification of indicators and of data needed.
These steps were taken for the topics 'institutional relations' and 'performance criteria'. Within these two areas more specific benchmarks were formulated but the dimensions of the institutional relations proved difficult to identify while for the performance criteria it was slightly easier. The next steps in the process were: - Collection and collation of data;
- Identification of benchmarks and choice of indicators;
- Analysis of the reasons for performance differences.
Availability of sufficient comparable data has been identified as a major bottleneck in the benchmarking of performance criteria. We concluded that we should not seek in all cases fully comparable information (for example when benchmarking punctuality). It is more realistic to aim for comparability at a level of 75%. We must accept to formulate conclusions in the context that complete comparability is not feasible as a result of widely different protocols for data present within the railway industry.
Within the institutional set up the difficulty has been to define a desirable benchmark that can serve as an example for others: what is the 'ideal model' to separate infrastructure from operations. At the moment the stakeholders (operators, authorities) and the academic community cannot agree on an appropriate formula. However a tenable basis for the Exercise was needed and we have chosen to collect more neutral (soft) information on institutional relations and policy objectives, without advocating at this stage what the preferred system should be. Steps 7-9 were designed to be of interest primarily to the participants in each case study: - Analysis of possible remedial measures;
- Proposals for action and continuous improvement programmes;
- Monitoring of results.
The railway pilot did not have as an objective to proceed further than these stages. Wherever possible the available information was used to create useful benchmarks and improvement programmes where under performance has been highlighted to allow individual stakeholders to use the results of this pilot study in their normal day to day work.
Air
Five meetings were organised in the framewor
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