The Impact of Land Transportation Integration on Service Agglomeration in Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Since transportation had experienced a rapid development in recent decades of China, especially Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, and greatly improve the regional transportation integration; this article discuss the topic of transportation integration influence on service agglomeration which is interesting and has empirical insights for urban development.

However, there are lots of questions need further discuss and descriptions in this paper, and thus affect its quality as follow:

1. About the research topic, there are many factors affect service industrial agglomeration except of transportation such as consumer market, labor, urban land use policies and so on, this paper focus on transportation integration without controlling other factors, this will largely influence research results.

2. As to the research concepts, both the definitions of transportation integration and service agglomeration were not clear in the paper. Though it use several indicators of transportation network structure and function to express transportation integration, but I think it is not complete, it is ignore factors like scale, efficiency and speed of transport systems. As to service agglomeration, the paper selected the wholesale and retail services(WH), transportation, warehousing and postal services(TR), information transmission, software and information technology services(In), scientific research and technical services (SC), finance(FI), leasing and commercial service industry(LE) also not completely include service industries, for example catering industry, tourism were not included, and the research has not given its select regulations.

3. In terms of two research hypothesis, its not very clearly depict in this paper. For the first hypothesis, it seems focus on spatial heterogeneous, and that were too broad. For the second hypothesis, it seems focus on knowledge spillover effects which were not very close to the research topic of this paper. In fact, the main potential contribution of this paper could be the comparison of transportation integration to existed studies of transportation cost reduction，transportation accessibility improvement and so on.

4. As to research data, I did not see what kinds of transportation network (railway system or highway system or other transportation mode or all these kinds of transportation systems); as a result, the indexes of transportation integration were not sufficient.

5. In terms of discussions and conclusions, the paper did not give a summary of general research idea and conclusion, but almost constrain in Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, thus reduce its general scientific meanings.

6. As to the organization and writing, there are several mistakes and missing. For example, there were no transportation network systems illustrated in the maps, and no scale bar in all figures, and sometime missing of units. The number of tables were disorder from Table 4. The description of Table 4 in page 12-13 were not coincident, as “Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Xuzhou, Jiaxing and Hefei were the top six cities in terms of transportation network structure index of Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration in 2020” but in table 4 the cities were Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuxi, Xuzhou, Changzhou, Suzhou(Jiangsu), and “Quzhou, Maanshan, Suqian, Yancheng and Zhoushan ranked the lowest five cities in the transportation network structure index of Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration.” but in table 4 the cities were “Xuancheng, Tongling, Chizhou, Anqing, Huangshan”.

Author Response

Dear reviewer 1:
Thank you for your decision and constructive comments on our manuscript. We have carefully considered the suggestion of Reviewer 1 and make some changes. We have tried our best to improve and made some changes in the manuscript.  Please find our itemized responses in below and my revisions in the re-submitted files. 
Thanks again!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The main goal of the article is to examine the influence mechanism of transportation infrastructure on the service industry from the perspective of urban agglomeration transportation integration. The authors use the urban agglomeration transportation integration index, which combines the transportation structure index (5 layers) and transportation function index (4 layers). I find this approach interesting, but in my opinion, the method of selecting the indicators used in the determination of both indexes requires some explanation. On what basis was it found that these indicators have the most significant impact on the structure and functionality? Has it also been checked that they are not mutually correlated?

The authors have identified a very interesting research problem. The strong point of the article is an exhaustive literature review that allows for the formulation of two research hypotheses in the field of the studied issue. They also chose a good testing ground. The region of Yangtze River Delta Urban agglomeration has undergone significant development over the last 10 years, both in terms of the transport network and service industry improvement.

The manuscript is written consistently and logically. The substantive methodological part was well described, and the results were properly presented and commented on.

Author Response

Dear reviewer 2:
Thank you for your decision and constructive comments on our manuscript. We have carefully considered the suggestion of Reviewer 2and make some changes. We have tried our best to improve and made some changes in the manuscript.  Please find our itemized responses in below and my revisions in the re-submitted files. 
Thanks again!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The comments have basically been revised. The hypothesis 1 need has to be clearly expressed.

Author Response

Thank you for your constructive comments on our manuscript. We have carefully considered the suggestion of Reviewer 1 and make some changes. We have tried our best to improve and made some changes in the manuscript. Please find our itemized responses in below and my revisions in the re-submitted files.
Thanks again!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf