Evaluation on the utility efficiency of metro infrastructure projects in China from sustainable development perspective

• The major indicators for evaluating the utility performance of metro project are identified.
• The four key indicators are established and formed to a mechanism to present the utility performance of metro system.
• The applicability of the indicator based utility performance model, namely, UEEI, is demonstrated for assessing the utility performance of metro project.
• The use of UEEI in the Chinese context has led to the ranking establishment of the utility efficiency performance of metro systems between 17 Chinese cities.

The development of metro infrastructure projects (MIP) has been playing an important role in the economic growth in China through improving urban transportation condition. The economic benefits from MIP in China have been well appreciated. However, concerns on the utility efficiency and the impacts of MIP on social and environmental aspects have been increasingly raised. It is anticipated that a large number of metro infrastructure projects will be built in the near future in China. There is a need for a method to guide the development of MIP towards achieving better utility efficiency and collective benefits between economic, social and environmental dimensions. Previous studies have provided various methods for evaluating economic performance of MIP, but it appears that there is no existing method for studying the utility efficiency of a metro infrastructure project particularly from sustainable development perspective. This paper presents a model for evaluating the utility efficiency of MIP with reference to the Chinese context, which is called utility efficiency evaluation index (UEEI) model. Population of city (POP), length of Metro systems (LEN), annual ridership of Metro systems (RID), ticket price (FAR) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are selected as the variables for developing the UEEI model. The utility efficiency of the 17 MIPs is analyzed by using the data collected from 17 cities in China.