The paper analyses the need for rail services to improve the accessibility to airports. Regardless of their direct financial feasibility (investment cost plus operational and maintenance expenses), rail services are being promoted in many large European airports as part of a global sustainable transport policy: permitting a reduction in cars - a reduction of negative externalities - and offering the necessary speed and reliability to make public transport competitive in time with the car. That trend is less obvious in US airports for several reasons (main hub role of the largest airports, less attractive and cohesive public transport service network, etc.). An aggregate logit type modal split model is calibrated assuming a measured utility function linear with time (accessing, waiting and riding) and fare (ticket fare for public transport such as bus, railway or metro, and parking fee for cars). Time and money variables have weights that are assumed identical for all the airports. A global calibration is poor, but greater insight can be obtained by analysing each category group and deleting special cases. Competitive public transport to airports needs to follow several rules according to integration (traffic management measures, transit fare integration, etc.), information, perceived cost, service frequency and reliability, etc. The paper sets different goals for passengers and airport staff, since their constraints are also different and the cross-airport data heterogeneous: the ratio of airport staff to passengers ranges from 400 to 2,600 employees/million passengers in the analysed airports. The current tendencies to improve level of service, quality of life and operations reliability bring back into consideration concepts and services previously discarded as economically infeasible. Railway or rapid transit links to airports can be considered a strategic need as a part of a sustainable and socially efficient airport service. Off-airport terminals (a concept discarded in the seventies because of its cost to the airlines) or City Air Terminals (CAT) as they are now known, are also being considered in Europe as an exponent of quality of service. For all these decisions, it is important to estimate the social costs of each transport mode and to include traffic restrictions (road pricing, parking fees, occupancy or time restrictions) as part of an integrated metropolitan transport planning policy that views the airport as a main mobility focus.
Abstract