Evaluating and Analyzing the Operation Efficiency of Urban Rail Transit Systems in China Using an Integrated Approach of DEA Model, Malmquist Productivity Index, and Tobit Regression Model
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 147, Issue 10
Abstract
With social progress and economic development, urban rail transit systems have been developed to satisfy the growing travel demands in China. Undoubtedly, it is necessary to evaluate the operation efficiency of urban rail transit systems and analyze their influence factors, which are highly significant for promoting management performance. In the present paper, an integrated approach is proposed, which consists of a data envelopment analysis (DEA) model, a Malmquist productivity index, and a Tobit regression model. For evaluating the operation efficiency of urban rail transit systems in China, the DEA model and the Malmquist productivity index provide an evaluation metric, and the Tobit regression model is used to carry out influential factor analysis. The test data are collected from six typical cities at different stages of rail transit system development from 2013 to 2017, in order to investigate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. The experimental results demonstrate the operation efficiency of different rail transit systems and the effects of several influencing factors. The conclusions from this paper can guide policymaking and provide references for enterprises to improve the operation efficiency of rail transit in China.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code generated or used during the study are available from the corresponding author by request.
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Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 147 • Issue 10 • October 2021
Copyright
© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 24, 2020
Accepted: Apr 1, 2021
Published online: Jul 27, 2021
Published in print: Oct 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Dec 27, 2021
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