The transport sector, as an industry with high energy consumption and high carbon emissions, plays an increasing role in achieving the goal of carbon emissions reduction in China. Understanding the situation of the transport sector’s carbon emissions efficiency and the relevant dominating driving forces is an important prerequisite for formulating carbon emissions reduction polices. This study evaluated the transport sector carbon emissions efficiency of 30 provinces in China from 2004 to 2016 using the Super slacks-based measure (Super-SBM) model,which employs Moran’s I indexand spatial econometric approaches to examine its spatial dependence and the dominating driving factors. The results are shown as follows. Firstly, the transport carbon emissions efficiency had a noticeable disparity across the provinces and regions, and the spatial distribution characteristic of transport sector carbon emissions efficiency could be described as “high in the east and low in the west”. Secondly, transport sector carbon emissions efficiency presented significant spatial dependence and clustering characteristics, and the pattern evolutions of spatial distribution presented a path-dependence effect to some extent. Thirdly, the regression results of the spatial Durbin model (SDM) indicated that the per-capita GDP and transportation energy consumption structure had significantly positive effects on transport sector carbon emissions efficiency, whereas the urbanization, transportation intensity, transportation energy intensity, and transportation service structure hada negative effect on transport sector carbon emissions efficiency.

The purpose of this paper is to study the dynamic evolution of regional comprehensive transportation structure by building a shift-share model, which is typically used in the analysis of land structure in the area of regional economics. Based on historical statistics, this paper analyzes the advantages and disadvantages in structure of different modes of transport in Shaanxi Province over the last 20 years. The results indicate: (1) The structural advantage of railway transportation is obvious, which is higher than the average level of railway transportation development in China. (2) There are no regional advantages in road transportation and waterway transportation. Although the passenger traffic volume of road transportation and waterway transportation is increasing year by year, it is largely due to the average growth of passenger traffic volume in national transportation.