Study On Efficiency Of Urban Public Transportation

Since 17th century its appearance, urban public transportation has become a main part of urban transportation so much as whole urban system gradually. It is important for the normally operation of other city departments. It can exert active function to promote the development of urban economy and civilization. However, at present in the internal city, there are a lot of problems in the development of public transportation. There problems include transportation congestion and low in average speed of bus. However, government pays more attention to these problems. Because government hardly measure efficiency of bus companies, which make government has hardly evaluate bus companies exactly. The allowance, which offers to bus companies by government, is low effect. Because bus companies have many problems, they need to reform. Therefore, we should measure efficiency objectively and accurately. It is useful to help government evaluate bus companies and make allowance has effect. According to measure efficiency, it can provide scientific function for the reform of bus companies. Much empirical work has been carried out and the advice on how to improve the efficiency of public transportation has been given.The paper uses stochastic frontier model to measure the efficiency of urban public transportation. Stochastic frontier model include some unobserved variables, which does not realize by using other methods.The main body of this paper is composed of four parts except preface and conclusion.First part expounds meaning of public transportation, station and function. Then the paper sums up the previous study fruit of urban public transportation and efficiency.Second part expounds the meaning of efficiency and introduces several kinds of efficiency measurement methods. The main methods are Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA). Compared DEA, SFA is more fit to the study of the paper.Third part measures efficiency of bus companies by using SFA and analyzed the factors that effect efficiency. Applied the number of seat-kilometers as the output, the paper measures efficiency of Beijing bus companies during the period from 1999 to 2005 and analyzes effect caused by factors, such as the network length, output, capital price and labor price. Fourth part proposes some suggestions to improve efficiency of urban transportation.