Sustainable Mechanism of the Entrusted Transportation Management Mode on High‐Speed Rail and the Impact of COVID‐19: A Case Study of the Beijing–Shanghai High‐Speed Rail

Abstract

The transport management mode fundamentally determines the sustainable development of high‐speed rail passenger transport (HSRPT), which was shocked by the COVID‐19 pandemic in 2020. In order to study the sustainable development mechanism of HSRPT and the impact of COVID‐19, primarily based on the data from the Beijing–Shanghai high‐speed rail (HSR) taken from 2018, we adopt system dynamics (SD) to provide a scenario simulation method to examination sustainable operation status of HSRPT under the entrusted transportation management mode (ETMM) by VENSIM, and take into account the following two evaluation indicators: economic and opera-tional. The results show the following: (1) Transportation demand and commissioned transportation management fees play a vital role in the sustainable operation of the Beijing–Shanghai HSR, causing significant changes in transportation revenue and transportation costs. (2) COVID‐19 had a great impact on the sustainable operation of the Beijing–Shanghai HSR. In 2020, the turnover and transportation profit of the Beijing–Shanghai HSR fell by 74.31% and 49.19%, respectively. In 2022, the transportation profit can be restored to the level of 2019. The study results reveal that Beijing– Shanghai HSR under the ETMM has a good sustainable development capability.