1666274 - Addressing Large Airport Mobility Needs with Automated People Movers and Automated Transit Systems

Addressing Large Airport Mobility Needs with Automated People Movers and Automated Transit Systems

Large, international airports have a wide range of passenger and employee mobility needs  to be met with conveyance systems that consider the unique nature of airports. While an airport is contained in a relatively confined area, they are still large activity centers that differ from urban and Central Business Districts. The differences present both constraints and specific challenges.

Constraints include limited travel options due to non-public / non-connecting roadways or pathways, security restrictions, travel within buildings, and other factors. Challenges include the multi-nodal nature of a large airport that creates a diversity of facility-to-facility distances, rider volumes, and conveyance passenger needs and expectations. For example:

• Transferring air passengers are typically unfamiliar with the airport and often have limited connection times;


• Varying amounts of baggage which affects boarding/alighting of some mobility technologies;


• Business travelers and younger travelers may have differing walk distance tolerances than leisure travelers or mobility impaired passengers;


• Families traveling as a group may have differing needs from the lone traveler; and


• Passenger groups with a single adult or leader cannot separate into separate groups.

Currently these mobility needs are met with a combination of conveyance methods on both the landside and airside ranging from:

• Walkways, with and without moving walks (sometimes referred to as “travelators”;


• Buses for employees, parking, transferring passengers, and other shuttles;


• Courtesy carts, typically within terminal/concourse facilities;


• Small to large scale APM and ATS applications, such as Automated People Movers (APM), Group Rapid Transit (GRT), Personal Rapid Transit (PRT), and Autonomous Vehicles (AV).

At many airports, however, the transportation choices for intra-airport movement available are not always optimized to meet at least some needs and may not work well as an overall seamless system.

To assist with considerations of improving the on-airport conveyance systems, this paper presents a review of the suitability of automated technologies to best meet the varied airport mobility needs and how they can be planned to better work together. Suggested ways to better optimize the interfaces between the automated modes are discussed.  A range of technologies is investigated, including associated timely issues related to implementation risks of each.  This paper focuses on automated applications, APMs, GRT, and PRT (some of which are referred to as Automated Transit Networks (ATN)), but provides context for the use of AVs at Airports. Issues are explored from both the users and owner/operator’s perspective including:

• Realistic requirements and capabilities;


• Evaluating technologies with differing levels of maturity and capabilities;


• General physical/infrastructure requirements;


• Resiliency and operational flexibility considerations


• Liability and safety certification; and


• Implementation timeframes and relative costs.