Train schedule serves as a foundation for operations management in urban rail transit (UＲT)． Aiming at releasing local congestion caused by demand surge，balancing passengers' travel delays and improving the overall efficiency of the whole network during the rush hour，an equality-efficiency balanced method for optimizing long-short route strategy in UＲT system was proposed． First，passengers were divided into specific categories according to their trip characteristics． Then the operational cost of UＲT company and the travel cost of passengers could be measured precisely． Next，an optimization model that strikes a good balance between maximizing transport capaci-ty and minimizing passengers' travel delays was formulated． To verify the effectiveness of proposed model，an em-pirical analysis was then presented． The results show that，when adopting a long-short route strategy for morning peak，the short route should cover the sections with maximum load rates in both up and down directions． The utili-zation rate of transport capacity is significantly affected by the length of short route． The train marshalling scheme should consider the maximum of section load and its threshold need． With the optimized long-short route strategy，
the utilization rate of transport capacity rises by 16. 69%，and the operational cost of UＲT company decreases by 21. 11%． In addition，passengers' travel delays also reach a well-balanced status．