Bridging the gaps: exploring air-rail intermodal transport research trends and comparative insights from CNKI, WoS, and Scopus

Abstract

The concept of integrating air and rail transportation modes has been explored for decades. However, “Air-rail intermodal transport (ARIT)” as a research topic has gained increasing attention in recent years worldwide, as scholars and practitioners increasingly recognize the potential benefits, such as enhancing efficiency, sustainability, and connectivity in passenger and freight movements, of combining air and high-speed rail (HSR) within a single seamless transportation journey. As China is widely recognized as a global leader in the HSR sector, research on HSR in China holds significant importance in academic and industrial fields. The study has a fourfold objective: (1) to understand the state-of-the-art ARIT research by adopting a bibliometric analysis; (2) to conduct a comparative analysis between research from China and other countries; (3) to explore research trends of existing literature; and (4) to draw insights for future research on ARIT. The results showed (1) Xu Feng and Nie Lei are the prolific authors of ARIT; (2) Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Civil Aviation University of China, and Beijing Jiaotong University are the core research institutions; (3) China leads this research topic worldwide; (4) Railway Transportation and Economy ranked first among other high-quality journals; (5) Currently, both Chinese and international research are focusing on the studies of transportation network, travel time, passenger demand, and transfer hub. Chinese studies focus more on infrastructure, technology development, and the integration among various transportation modes, while international ones have broader perspectives, such as social welfare, environmental sustainability, passenger satisfaction, and service quality; (6) The keywords, such as cross-border transportation, e-commerce, and passenger groups, reflect the emerging research directions. The study for the first time provides a holistic understanding of the current state of knowledge on ARIT from the perspectives of Chinese and international scholars and identifies avenues for future research.