Travel time analysis in the Chinese coupled aviation and high-speed rail network

Thanks to the rapid expansion of the Chinese Aviation (A) network and of the High-Speed Rail (HSR) network, intermodal travel across air transport and the high-speed rail network has become a fully integrated process for many inter-city travelers. By constructing the spatially-embedded Coupled Aviation and High-Speed Rail (CAHSR) network, whose two layers respectively represent the aviation and the HSR network, while the coupling describes ground transfer between different facilities (airports and/or rail stations) in the same city, we focus on a systematic travel time analysis for major mega-regions. Our empirical analysis calculates passengers’ end-to-end travel time between major mega-regions, including real information on waiting and transfer time. The results indicate that sufficient frequencies of flights/HSR trains have led to high multi-modal accessibility across different time periods of the day. In addition, we also find that highly intermodal air-HSR mobility pathways can be extremely important to link small cities to urban mega-region hubs. Our findings may assist timetable improvement in future infrastructure planning for the CAHSR network.