Relationships Between Airport Activity and Ground Transportation Needs

Abstract

Shortly after the passage of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration recognized that there was very little guidance available for airport operators and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to use for planning intermodal access to airports in the United States. As a result, the Intermodal Ground Access to Airports: A Planning Guide was developed. This Guide is designed to provide guidance to states, MPOs, and airport operators on the types of analyses that should be performed when airport access is being planned. It describes the airport access planning process and procedures for performing analyses. During the development of the Guide, relationships were developed between the level of originating passengers at American airports and the characteristics of airport access and landside facilities. The types of characteristics that were related to originating passengers included public parking, vehicle trips, terminal curbside design, and mode of access. Some of the relationships that were developed, how they were derived, and their importance to airport access planning are now presented. In addition, some additional relationships that should be developed are suggested.

Airport Access Road Traffic Demand Estimation

“…A number of studies have documented various subjects including transit service, traveler mode choice, curbside design, and terminal parking operation to mitigate congestion in airport system. Regarding ground transportation in the airport, Shapiro et al provided policy guidance, rules of thumb, data, and analytical techniques related to airport access in the Intermodal Ground Access to Airport: A Planning Guide [2]. Using the guide as a starting point, Mahmassani et al expanded the set of solution options to consider airport access in its strategic regional context, and further addresses specific issues encounterd at Texas airports [3].…”

“…Using the guide as a starting point, Mahmassani et al expanded the set of solution options to consider airport access in its strategic regional context, and further addresses specific issues encounterd at Texas airports [3]. Shapiro and Katzman presented highlights from the planning Guide and provided detailed discussion of vehicle trip relationships and airport trip generation, curbside configurations, parking requirements and mode access to U.S. airports [4]. Mahmassani et al summarized the finding of the literature review and discussed the applicability of ground access planning at four of the major airports in Texas [3].…”

“…Airport land access models have collected and analyzed the vehicle arrival pattern and fitted a statistical distribution, such as Poisson distribution or exponential distribution, to generate vehicular traffic for the model input [3]. However few studies have been performed that estimate the number of ground passenger trips made to an airport as a function of originating passengers by time of day [2]. And existing tools that have been used thus far in the airport ground access system analysis are either focused on curbside parking or mode choice analysis.…”