ارتباط دسترسی به فرودگاه و رقابت فرودگاه   Relevance of airport accessibility and airport competition

1. Introduction In recent years, there seems to be a growing tendency of airport constructions and reconstructions in China. It is estimated that by the end of the 13th five-year plan, there will be 244 airports including 23 newly constructed airports, and 37 reconstructed airports. Within these 244 airports, there will be 30 large-scale airports with 10 million passenger traffic annually. Accessibility is an important indicator which reflects the degree of difficulty that travelers have in accessing to the destination. The higher level of airport accessibility indicates that the airport landside transportation facilities are more perfect and passengers can access to the airport more conveniently. Studies have shown that airport accessibility is one of the important factors that affect whether travelers choose air travel or not. In the same area, airports of high level of accessibility are more competitive. Therefore, accurately measuring the level of the airport accessibility and quantifying relationship between the level of accessibility and airport competitiveness can help the planning department reasonably position airport nature, scientifically plan the airport development scale and can also effectively promote the management department to improve the level of airport external transport service so as to enhance the overall competitiveness of the airport. Airport accessibility has been studied for quite a long time over the world. The evaluation methodology based on disaggregate theory has been found in various types of applications in recent years. However, there still lacks in depth researches on airport accessibility. It is usually caused by choice of too many competitive models of airports. Series of studies on selective competition of airports in San Francisco was conducted by Skinner, Harvey and Pels E (e.g., Skinner, 1976; Harvey, 1987; Pels et al., 2001). It showed that the cost of time and expense of arrival at airports affected passengers’ choices. Some other studies measured airports’ accessibility in perspective of spacial scale (e.g., Pels et al., 2003; Hess and Polak, 2005; Zhang and Xie, 2005). For instance, Humphreys studied airport accessibility and regional layout in Britain (e.g., Humphreys and Franccis, 2002). Feighan compared airport accessibility with different spacial scales in Europe (e.g., Fengjun et al., 2010). Few scholars have studied airport accessibility in perspective of transportation cost (e.g., Kim and Kwan, 2003; Bielli et al., 2006). For example, Ying Xiwen and Xu Tao studied the accessibility of hub airport and civil airport respectively (e.g., Xiwen and Jing, 2006; Xu et al., 2008). Although some results had been gained from studies listed above, some deficiencies were still present: (1). Studies on airport accessibility in Europe and North America were mostly focused on the traffic model using automobile, and measurement of time or distance, rather than on integration of different means and tourists’ needs of being comfortable. (2). There were quite a number of researches focusing on how to improve the level of airport accessibility, but very few studies have been focused on the relevance between accessibility and competitiveness of airport, especially the airport development scale. Thus,it leads to the lack of persuasive data for later studies to refer to. Proceeding from perspective of convenience, economy and comfort level for passengers, and series of data were obtained by investigating the transportation infrastructure and passenger travel behaviors of the nine large airports in Jiangsu province. In this paper, an airport accessibility model based on cost is proposed to intuitively reflect every airport’s level of accessibility by generating a figure which shows the relationship between airport accessibility and range of services. It provides scientific support for airport managers to objectively grasp and evaluate the level of airport external transport services. A panel data model is also applied to study the relation among passenger scale, accessibility, scope of air routes, and economic level. It also analyzes the effect of different indexes on airports of different scales and scientifically quantifies the relationship between the level of airport transportation service and airport competitiveness, thus helping managers have a deep understanding of the importance of airport external transportation system construction and prompting managers to speed up improving the convenience for passengers to access to the airport, so as to enhance the overall competitiveness of the airport.