Abstract: Currently, nearly 80% of Shanghai urban rail transit lines are operating at the speed lower than the design. To further improve the operation efficiency of Shanghai urban rail transit, from the angle of travel speed design process, how the travel speed is established and the main factors that affect speed at each stage are analyzed. Results show that the main factors influencing travel speed include train maximum operational speed, average station spacing, number of speed-limit curves, train operation automation grade and door switch time. Taking Shanghai Rail Transit Line 12 as an example, control variate method is adopted to calculate and analyze various types of travel speed influencing factors for the study of their influencing degree, and the primary and secondary relation. Results show that, ranking by influencing degree, five factors from high to low are average station spacing, train maximum operational speed, automation degree of train door and platform door, train operation automation grade and number of speed-limit curves. Based on the research results, travel speed optimization strategy is proposed: (1) at line design stage, line curve radius and curve transition length should match with train operating speed, and the maximum operational speed should match with average station spacing; adopting FAO (fully automatic operation) to reduce the drivers′ manual workload so that the driver′s operation time during stop could be effectively reduced. (2) at line operation stage, the driver operations should be standardized, so that the gap between the actual station dwell time and the design is narrowed, and the overall efficiency of line travel speed will be improved.