Airport access and egress trips in an agent-based travel demand model

Abstract

Large airports are major components of the transportation systems. Trips to the airport (ground access) or from the airport (ground egress) contribute to the travel demand of the airport surroundings and may overload the infrastructure, with impacts on both airport users and residents in areas near the airport. Given the different travel characteristics of most airport trips (non-habitual travel, luggage is carried, higher willingness to pay for travel, fixed time of arrival, etc.), traditional travel demand models poorly reflect travel behavior to and from the airport. We design a specific sub-model to add this trips to the travel demand generated by an agent-based model. The airport sub-model assigns origin of airport access trips or destination of airport egress trips, based on trip rates obtained from a passenger survey. After that, we assign each trip to a synthetic person (if it is made by residents) or we synthetize a new person (if the trip is made by a visitor). A multinomial logit mode choice model is applied. Lastly, a departure time is sampled from a distribution of airplane arrivals and departures. This model is applied to the airport of Munich, as part of the metropolitan area of Munich (Germany). The addition of airport access and egress trips contributes to a better representation of the demand in the surroundings of the airport.