Alona Pukhova

To meet the environmental goal of a largely greenhouse gas-neutral transport system, motorized private vehicle trips need to be shifted to more sustainable modes. This study tested for long-distance travel in Germany in 2030 the the traffic and environmental implications of push strategies (implementing toll roads and increasing auto operating costs) and pull strategies (improving access to rail with on-demand services and improving rail and long-distance bus services). A synthetic population fo...»

Many metropolitan regions are investigating Urban Air Mobility (UAM) as a new transport mode for medium distance intra-regional trips. In this paper, an agent-based travel demand model was developed to simulate UAM demand for the region surrounding Munich, Germany. Special attention was given to mode choice, vertiport access and egress, airport trips, and UAM vehicle capacity constraints. Under base conditions, the model predicts a rather small mode share for UAM of 0.61%. The results show that in a metropolitan area with well-developed road and transit networks, traveling by UAM does not save much time. This is particularly true if access and egress trips to and from vertiports are included, as well as wait times, security checks and boarding times. The model shows that there is no reduction in vehicle kilometers traveled by car due to the modal shift to UAM. In fact, if access and egress trips to the …

Every sector needs to minimize GHG emissions to limit climate change. Emissions from transport, however, have remained mostly unchanged over the past thirty years. In particular, air travel for short-haul flights is a significant contributor to transport emissions. This article identifies factors that influence the demand for domestic air travel. An agent-based model was implemented for domestic travel in Germany to test policies that could be implemented to reduce air travel and CO2 emissions. The agent-based long-distance travel demand model is composed of trip generation, destination choice, mode choice and CO2 emission modules. The travel demand model was estimated and calibrated with the German Household Travel Survey, including socio-demographic characteristics and area type. Long-distance trips were differentiated by trip type (daytrip, overnight trip), trip purpose (business, leisure, private) and mode (auto, air, long-distance rail and long-distance bus). Emission factors by mode were used to calculate CO2 emissions. Potential strategies and policies to reduce air travel demand and its CO2 emissions are tested using this model. An increase in airfares reduced the number of air trips and reduced transport emissions. Even stronger effects were found with a policy that restricts air travel to trips that are longer than a certain threshold distance. While such policies might be difficult to implement politically, restricting air travel has the potential to reduce total CO2 emissions from transport by 7.5%.

In this paper, the required models and methods to analyze and quantify the potential demand for urban air mobility (UAM) complementing public transport and possible impacts were defined and applied to the Munich Metropolitan region. An existing agent-based transport model of the study area were used and extended to cover socio-demographic changes up to the year 2030 and intermodal UAM services. An incremental logit model for UAM was derived to simulate demand for this new mode. An airport access model was developed as well. Three different UAM networks with different numbers of vertiports were defined. Sensitivity studies of ticket fare and structure, flying vehicle cruise speed, passenger process times at vertiports and different Urban Air Mobility networks sizes were performed. For the reference case, UAM accounts for a modal share of 0.5%. The absolute UAM demand is concentrated on very …