Performance of Urban Public Transport Systems in China: Data Envelopment Analysis

This paper investigates the efficiency of urban public transport systems in China by a data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. Based on the data from 652 China cities in 2004 and 2006, we find that the efficiency of overall urban public transport system is relatively low but with a sign of improvement from 2004 to 2006. The urban public transport systems in east coast, south coast and middle Changjiang river areas have relatively higher efficiencies than those of others, which is consistent with the uneven distribution of economic level and investment on public transport among China regions. The policy implications on the basis of this study are that the increase of investment on public transport sector especially in the less developed areas, together with the development of urban rail transit mode would be effective ways enhancing the efficiencies of urban public transport systems. 1 J.HAN, Y.HAYASHI 13th International Conference of Hong Kong Society for Transportation Studies, 2008.12.