Study of Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Urban Railway Productivity: Focusing on Seoul Urban Railway with Malmquist Productivity Index

The operational goal of urban railway public enterprises is to provide efficient public transportation services to citizens based on the operating budget. However, if the number of passengers decreases due to a global pandemic such as COVID-19, passenger fare revenue and operation productivity decrease. In this paper, the researcher analyzed whether the decrease in passengers due to the COVID-19 pandemic affected the productivity of urban railway operations; this was done using the DEA-based MPI (Malmquist productivity index). As a result of the analysis, it was confirmed that there was a significant decrease in passengers and Malmquist productivity during the COVID-19 period, and that there was a technical change due to a shrinkage in production frontier (production possibility set) of the entire urban railway of Seoul urban railway. In addition, it was confirmed that the declined productivity recovered only a two lines (Line 5 and 8); this indicates that the entire urban railway operation has not yet recovered. Through this study, implications were presented for operators to make strategies to maintain productivity in urban railway operations when passengers decreases due to external factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic.