A rail-air link is a service providing passenger rail transport from an airport to a nearby city. It is identified that trips to and from airports should be treated as a separate category in regional travel models [1]. Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) shows a continuous growth in passenger volume, exceeding its current design capacity of 6 million per annum. The passenger movement by the end of year 2016 exceeded 9.5 million. The stage two development plan of BIA aims to supply services for a capacity of 15 million passengers per annum. The development plan comprises a new terminal building segregating departures and arrivals to two levels and a link bridge connecting to a railway terminal with a covered platform served by double tracks situated 150m away from the airport terminal; such that the current distance of over 650m to the Airport Station which currently handles mostly fuel trains will be significantly reduced. Through literature review different attributes affecting the operational success of a rail-air connection such as individuals’ concern about travel time, cost and other concerns such as luggage, flexibility of departure time and time of the current and return trips can be identified [2]. These attributes provide a background for evaluating the necessary transportation system improvements. The objective of this research is to determine the feasibility of providing a rail link to BIA based on passenger perception about using the proposed rail link as a new mode of connectivity, particularly to inland destinations to which the railway network provides connectivity.

Liyanage, C.J.K., & Kumarage, A.S. (2018). Feasibility of a railway link complementing Bandaranaike International Airport stage two development [Extended Abstract]. In T.L. Gunaruwan (Ed.), Proceedings of 3rd International Conference on Research for Transport and Logistics Industry 2018 (pp. 111-115). Sri Lanka Society of Transport and Logistics.