Structural Entropy, Modal Diversity Entropy, and Accessibility Differentiation: A Study of the Western China-Central...

Cross-border multimodal transportation systems are essential for regional connectivity, yet their structural concentration, modal imbalance, community organization, and accessibility differentiation remain insufficiently understood from an entropy perspective. Based on 2024 data, this study constructs railway, highway, aviation, and integrated transportation networks between Western China and the five Central Asian countries. It integrates complex network analysis, structural entropy, modal diversity entropy, Louvain community detection, and accessibility assessment within a structure-organization-function framework. The results reveal a core-periphery pattern, with Xi'an, Urumqi, Almaty, and Tashkent serving as hubs. Structural entropy shows that highway connections are balanced, aviation links are concentrated around core hubs, and the integrated network reflects the coexistence of core-hub agglomeration and multimodal coverage expansion. Modal diversity entropy indicates that high connectivity does not necessarily imply balanced modal configuration, and 41.8% of nodes remain dependent on a single mode. Community detection reveals local cohesion and global segmentation, while accessibility analysis identifies a Western China core and Central Asian periphery. Sensitivity analyses based on common-node normalization, travel-time weighting, and alternative modal weights confirm the robustness of the findings. These results provide an integrated diagnostic framework for identifying structural concentration, modal imbalance, and accessibility inequality in cross-border multimodal transportation networks.