Environmental and Safety Performance of European Railways: An Integrated Efficiency Assessment

Railways play a pivotal role in advancing environmentally conscious and safe transportation systems, positioning them as a vital component of Europe’s future mobility strategy. This study tackles the complex dimensions of sustainability in railway transport by combining environmental impacts and safety considerations within a single, integrated analytical framework. We extend the variable intermediate slack-based measure (VSBM) model to incorporate undesirable outputs—specifically accidents and emissions—allowing for a joint evaluation of safety and environmental performance. The revised model is applied to assess the operational efficiency of 14 European railway operators between 2010 and 2018. Compared to conventional efficiency models, our enhanced VSBM approach provides improved discriminatory power and reveals significant changes in relative efficiency rankings. By integrating safety and environmental dimensions, this study contributes a new perspective on sustainable railway performance measurement.