Airport Curbside and Parking Area Operations at BIA – Analysis of User Behavior

Abstract

Abstract:Airport curbside, where travelers and their baggage enter and exit the terminal, and the designated parking area are important components in airport land-side facilities. Passengers expect safe and efficient roadway operations even as volumes increase, but the design and capacity of the curbside are often constrained by the terminal building and the proximity of on-airport land-side infrastructure. The operating characteristics of airport terminal curbside differ significantly from those of most other roadways due to several reasons such as vehicle dwell time, maneuver vehicles to and from adjacent lane, variation in demand etc. The capacity of a curbside roadway is defined both by the number of vehicles that can be accommodated while stopping to pick up or drop off passengers and the number that can be accommodated while traveling past the curbside in the through lanes. Therefore a study of operations at curbside and parking area is important to identify issues related to existing and future demand levels.The main focus of the paper is on the evaluation of vehicle operations and passenger behavior at the BIA terminal access roadway, weaving segment, arrival and departure curbside roadways and terminal car park. Analysis of vehicular traffic, travel mode choices, and curbside roadway vehicle queues, vehicle dwelling times, passenger occupancy time at curbs and passenger processing and walking times will provide useful information for developing plans for operational improvements as well as for future expansions. Using the available data, the demand and the capacity at these facilities are evaluated to estimate the existing level of service. In addition, measures were identified to improve the operational efficiency of these facilities and design improvements are proposed to ensure good operational efficiency for the forecast future demand.

Assessment of Curbside Roadway Level of Service of The Bandaranayke International Airport – Sri Lanka: A Comparison of The Analysis Tools in ACRP 40

“…Inner porch mainly accommodates the departure curbside access vehicles and the outer porch two lanes mainly accommodates through traffic. The survey observations by Galagedara (2013) describes that hardly any public vehicles stop at the departure curbside to unload passengers apart from the heavy vehicles needing to access duty free shops [7,8]. Therefore, only the inner porch of the departure curbside will be considered in the curbside utilization calculations.…”

“…Therefore, a lot of research have been carried out over the world in view of evaluating level of service and performance of airports and measures to improve them. [5,6,7,8,9]…”