Ground access behaviour of air-rail passengers: A case study of Dalian ARIS

Passenger ground access behaviour greatly impacts the promotion and development of air-rail integrated service (ARIS). However, little is known about people's actual choice behaviours with combined ARIS alternatives. To further understand the decision mechanisms of air-rail passengers, this paper specifically analyses the ground access behaviour of ARIS passengers and identifies key influential factors at the fostering stage when the air and rail services are not integrated. We first introduce the development of ARIS in China, including types of air-rail network synchronization, their development stages and the structure of the total ground access time. Using revealed preference panel data from ARIS passengers at Dalian Airport, a mixed multinomial logit model with unbalanced panel data was estimated while considering group characteristics and the random distribution of the total local dwelling time. It is found that passengers tend to make choices about ARIS alternatives from the perspective of ground access time and not from a perspective of high-speed scheduling. Passengers generally prefer to maintain a longer safety margin time when choosing ARIS alternatives.