With the steady increase of corporate system reform in the railway transportation industry, high-speed railways have accelerated their steps toward marketization, and the market competition they face has become increasingly fierce. In this context, enterprises need to make quick adjustments to new changes in order to seize the market share, obtain stable ticket income, and eventually, achieve financial sustainability while ensuring the healthy development of high-speed railways. Thus, it is particularly important to determine a reasonable ticket price. While considering supply and demand, market competition, and passenger utility, this study constructs a model of the passenger flow sharing rate and applies it to modeling the optimal ticket price for high-speed railways, taking the Beijing–Shanghai High-speed Railway as an example for calculating this model. Using the results calculated, this study analyzes the influence of the optimal ticket price on the financial sustainability of the enterprise through use of the evaluation system of financial sustainability established above. The results show that the existing price for a train ticket from of Beijing to Shanghai is not the optimal one, and there is still room for a price increase; the ticket price has an impact on financial sustainability by affecting corporate operating income and cash flow. The study provides a method for formulating the optimal ticket price for high-speed railway travel and enriches the research on the financial sustainability of high-speed railways.

As the scale of development continues to expand, carbon emissions of urban rail transit (URT) in China have gradually increased each year, posing certain pressure on the carbon emission reduction efforts in the URT industry. To evaluate the current status of low-carbon development in the URT industry, this paper first constructs an annual carbon emission accounting model for URT that considers both the construction and operation processes. Based on this model, the annual carbon emissions of URT in China from 2015 to 2023 are calculated. Furthermore, based on decoupling theory, the relationship between carbon emissions and industry development in URT is explored from both the construction and operation aspects. The results show that: (1) From 2015 to 2023, the total carbon emissions of URT in China increased significantly from 14.425 million tons to 24.7072 million tons. The proportion of carbon emissions from construction is higher during the study period, but the growth rate of carbon emissions from operation is faster. (2) The order of carbon emissions from URT in different regions from largest to smallest is: East > West > Central > Northeast. (3) During the study period, the carbon emissions from URT construction in China were weakly decoupled from the operational lines. (4) There was an expansive coupling relationship between carbon emissions from URT operation and passenger transport turnover in China. These findings can provide some guidance for the sustainable development of the URT industry.

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