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MODAIR |
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Airports are, by nature, interchange or connecting nodes linked at least with road infrastructure and more and more with rail infrastructures. Today, lot of discussions are about the role of airports as central multimodal interchange nodes. Therefore, rail connections at airports are getting more and more important because of their benefits for airport operators, passengers and also with regards to the external costs of transport (congestion problems and environmental costs).
Among the European airports which have already an important “background” in the area of air / rail inter-modality, we can mention a number of airports of the “core area” such as Amsterdam Schiphol, Frankfurt Main or Paris CDG, because of their integration into a high speed railway network (Thalys, ICE, and TGV).
We should also highlight the examples of London Heathrow and Stockholm Arlanda which are equipped with fast and efficient connection to the city centre via dedicated local access railways link. Other airports are also linked to the suburban and/or regional railway network (underground, metro).
Finally, event if a lot of the airports, for which the traffic is continuously growing, have not yet any experience in this domain of air / rail inter-modality, the majority is paying great interest to that domain.
As a matter of fact and as already shown by the study – “The Airport of the future: Central link of inter-modal transport?” (refer to CARE INO II Airport of the Future 2004 project) – many airports in Europe are already concerned by inter-modality or are thinking in inter-modality development. For a given airport however, the questions are often to decide to what extent airport inter-modality might be developed and to assess the potential of inter-modality development for an airport.
These questions are often difficult to answer since they depend upon a large set of data, including infrastructure, operators, services and demand variables.
In order to deal with such questions, the present study – “MODAIR” aims at elaborating a methodology as well as a tool with the objective of measuring airport inter-modality and evaluating how a development in inter-modality could impact airport catchment’s areas.
The project has started at the beginning of year 2005 and has consisted in:
- the building of a set of indicators and the development of a software to be used, in a first step (2005), as a tool for measuring airport inter-modality and in a second step (2006) for assessing the impact of inter-modality on airport catchments area:
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