Under the operation service problem of public transit in China, this work studied the impacts of the operating efficiency and service effectiveness of public transit based on stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and the trans-log function with the annual data from 2010 to 2013 of 36 cities in China. Results indicated that the operating efficiency of public transit exhibited a downward trend, i.e., from 0.854 to 0.847. Meanwhile, service effectiveness demonstrated an improvement from 0.615 in 2010 to 0.625 in 2013. The level of urbanization had a positive effect on improving the operating efficiency of public transit, whereas the rail passenger share rate had a negative impact on service effectiveness. Cities with a population of 10 million exhibited high operating efficiency. The operating efficiency of the central region was higher than those of the western and eastern regions.