Improving the performance of airport shuttle through demand-responsive service with dynamic fare strategy considering mixed demand

Abstract

Given the booming aviation industry, airport landside transportation systems have been facing severe challenges. With the development of communication technologies, the conventional airport shuttle—one of the major components of landside transportation—is expected to operate more flexibly to meet diverse travel demands. Therefore, this study aims to explore how the demand-responsive airport shuttle might work and support the decision-making for airport management in the aspects of flexible stop location and diversified service design. The mixed demand, consisting of reservation and real-time demand, is considered. First, we propose an improved clustering method that takes into account the spatio-temporal similarity of reservation demand to identify demand-driven fixed stops, and the batch response strategy for the selection of demand-responsive stops meeting real-time demand. The dynamic fare strategy is further presented to discuss the effects of fare incentives for spatio-temporal service adjustments. Moreover, we develop a two-stage service optimization approach considering the cost and benefits from the perspective of passengers and operators. Trips from the Huitian area (located to the north of Beijing, China) and Beijing Capital International Airport are used as case studies. The results show that the design of 5 routes with 14 fixed stops effectively covers the areas of dense travel demand. Without affecting the on-time arrival of the demand-responsive shuttle at the airport, the load factor for all arriving vehicles exceeds 80% when demand-responsive stops are also served. The study thus provides deep insights into the service design of the demand-responsive airport shuttle and the development of differentiated operating strategies.