中国城市车辆耗能与公共交通效率研究

A Study of China's Urban Vehicle Energy Consumption and Public Transport Efficiency

城市公共交通的发展为人们出行提供了更有效、更节能的交通方式,但是高效率的城市公共交通系统是否会有效地抑制车辆的能源消费,或者这一抑制效应到底有多大?这是在目前城市公共交通优先发展战略背景下需要明确的一个重要问题。本文试图从城市道路公交的角度,来分析城市道路公共交通的运行效率对城市车辆能源消费的抑制效应。本文利用中国36个中心城市2010—2015年的道路公交运营数据,结合非径向方向距离函数(NDDF)的方法,对不同城市的公交车和出租车的运行效率进行评价。在此基础上,对城市道路公共交通的运行效率对车辆能源消费的抑制效应进行分析。本文还利用IV-GMM方法处理内生性问题,以得到更为合理的估计结果。最后,利用面板门限模型对收入效应带来的影响进行了深入讨论。

China s urbanization level has increased as its economy has developed rapidly.The vehicle sector,an important part of the transportation industry,has also entered a rapid growth stage.By the end of 2016,China s automobile ownership reached 194 million,with 27.52 million automobiles newly registered.Both numbers set historical records.The rapid development of the vehicle sector has led to a substantial increase in energy consumption.In 2015,China s automobile energy consumption accounted for about 9.4%of the nation s primary energy consumption and more than 50%of China s oil consumption.With the current growth rate of 28 million automobiles annually,the energy consumption of vehicles is expected to expand rapidly.The urban public transportation system is the major engine of a city s economic development and the key to enhancing a city s competitiveness.The development of urban public transport provides people with more efficient modes of transport.Can highly efficient urban public transport systems effectively reduce the energy consumption of automobiles?This is an important issue that needs to be clarified,especially as urban public transport development is being prioritized.It is necessary to provide evidence to support policies for developing urban public transport in the future.This paper analyzes the effects of urban public transport efficiency on reducing vehicle energy consumption.This paper considers the operational data of different types of buses and taxis in 36 major central cities in China from 2010 to 2015,applying a non-radial direction distance function(NDDF)method to evaluate the operational efficiency of urban public transportation.Overall,the efficiencies of both buses and taxis increased during this period,but the improvement in bus efficiency was not as large.The average efficiencies of buses and taxis in 2015 were 0.56 and 0.62,respectively,which was still relatively low.This indicates that there is still plenty of room for improvement in the operational efficiency of urban public transport.Next,we calculate the energy consumption of small-scale private cars in each city.Based on this,we determine the inhibitory effects of urban public transport efficiency on vehicle energy consumption.We use an IV-GMM method to deal with endogeneity problems and to obtain more reasonable estimates.The impact of the operational efficiency of urban buses on vehicle energy consumption is significantly negative,indicating that improvements in urban public transport efficiency can effectively reduce the growth of vehicle energy consumption.The results are robust to the possibility of endogeneity and survive a stability test.To better understand the impact of income effects,we estimate the threshold effect of income.Our results indicate that the impact of urban bus efficiency on vehicle energy consumption gradually weakens as per capita income increases.In other words,improvements in the efficiency of urban public transport are more effective at reducing vehicle energy consumption in cities with lower per capita income.This may be due to the income elasticity of demand or differences in vehicle ownership.At present,China s vehicle ownership remains relatively low.For cities with high per capita income,the demand for vehicles is strong and vehicle ownership is still in a stage of rapid expansion.As such,improvements in the efficiency of urban public transport have a smaller impact on vehicle energy consumption.For cities with lower income per capita,vehicle ownership is at a low level.The inhibitory effect of improved urban public transport efficiency is thus more obvious.