Research On Operation Efficiency Of Urban Rail Transit Based On A Two-stage Super-SBM Model

With the expansion of urban scale and population growth,the contradiction between supply and demand of public transport resources,traffic congestion and environmental pollution has become increasingly serious.The urban rail transit(URT)system has been developing more rapidly in recent years due to its advantages of high speed,high capacity,energy saving and environmental protection,high safety and high on-time travel rate.The overall construction demand for URT in China is gradually increasing,but the investment in URT system is large and the return period is long,and some cities are in a loss-making situation all year round.Therefore,taking into account the development needs of URT and the actual operation situation,it is increasingly important to conduct an accurate measurement and analysis of the operation efficiency to promote the sustainable development of URT and cities.In this study,the super efficiency SBM model,Malmquist total factor productivity index method,coupled coordination degree model and grey correlation analysis method are combined with coupled coordination theory and sustainable development theory to measure and analyse the operational efficiency of URT.Firstly,the whole process of URT operation is regarded as two sub-stages,namely investment and operation,and suitable evaluation indicators for URT operation efficiency are selected from three aspects,namely input,intermediate variables and output,to construct a two-stage evaluation index system containing non-expected output.Then,the super-efficient SBM model and Malmquist Total Factor Productivity Index method are applied to measure and analyse the spatial and temporal evolution of rail transit operational efficiency of 29 cities in China from 2017 to 2021.Finally,the strategies for improving the operational efficiency of URT are discussed from two perspectives: the coupling and coordination degree of the two-stage efficiency of URT and the key factors affecting the operational efficiency of URT.The results show that:(1)From the results of measuring the efficiency of URT in the investment and operation phases,the annual average values of investment efficiency and operation efficiency are gradually increasing,but the annual average value of efficiency is still less than 1,which indicates that there is still a certain gap from the production frontier;both the investment efficiency and the operation efficiency of URT have obvious differences in the four regions(eastern,central,western and northeastern regions).(2)From the inter-period comparison and dynamic evolution of total factor productivity in the two phases,the MI index and the EC and TC indices of most cities in the investment phase are all greater than 1,indicating that productivity and technical efficiency have increased in the investment phase and that the level of production technology has progressed;there are obvious differences in productivity between cities and the level of productivity is mainly determined by technical efficiency.In the operation phase,the ML index and the EC and TC indices of each city are all distributed around the value of 0,and more than half of the cities have all three indices less than or equal to 0.The productivity in the operation phase is decreasing year by year,and the operation efficiency also tends to decline;the index EC and the index TC jointly influence the productivity level.(3)From the analysis of the coupling and coordination degree of efficiency between the two phases and the factors influencing operational efficiency,the average coupling and coordination degree between the two phases of investment and operation during the five-year study period was 0.6354,with only six cities in category I being highly coordinated and most cities in category II being slightly coordinated;the indicator factors that have the greatest influence on the operational efficiency of URT are the internal factors of the URT system The number of stations and line length,as well as the commuter peak congestion index,which is an indicator to evaluate the degree of congestion in a city.Based on the above conclusions,suggestions for countermeasures related to improving the operational efficiency of URT are put forward in three aspects:strengthening the understanding of the development rules of the city itself and reasonably planning the scale and speed of construction;improving the operation and management level and enhancing the comprehensive service quality;and introducing relevant guiding policies and optimising the internal organisational structure.The aim is to improve the operational efficiency of URT and contribute to the sustainable development of URT systems.