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

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 operational. 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.