A Study of State-owned Public Bus Transit Performance in Addis Ababa City, Ethiopia

The State-Owned bus transit enterprises; Anbessa and Shger city bus play a lead role in the Mass Transit System of Addis Ababa city. So, this study examined the operational and financial performance of each bus transit enterprise. Data have been collected from Annual Reports of each Transit Agency for three years (2016/17to2018/19). Ratio and percentage were used to measure and analyze the performance of transit operators.

The results of this study indicate, Anbessa city bus performs well with the following operational performance indicators: service utilization and vehicle utilization; but it shows a problem on Staff bus ratio, staff productivity, and operational safety indicators. Whereas, Sheger city bus performs well in terms of fleet utilization, Staff bus ratio, manpower productivity, and operational safety indicators. Moreover, findings on the financial performance show both enterprises provide services with the deficit; but recently there is an improvement on Anbessa city bus and the amount of deficit for Sheger city bus is growing at higher rate for recent years.

Last, the result suggests that even if they are the state-owned bus transit operators and subsidized by the Government, they need great improvements in utilizing their resources to enhance their financial and operational performance and deliver services incompetent with other operators in the city.