BACKGROUND

Airport landside congestion has become a pressing issue at many U.S. commercial airports.  This congestion affects not only an airport’s landside efficiency, but often overall operational efficiency.  Conventional strategies for mitigating landside congestion, including parking fees, staffed ground transportation dispatchers and traffic control officers, ground transportation contractual and regulatory requirements, and time-limited restrictions such as dwell time appear to offer limited benefit.  Congestion pricing, which involves imposing fees on drivers entering the airport premises or certain congested zones (e.g., terminal curbs) may offer a potential solution. While such practices are uncommon at U.S. airports, some airports have begun exploring this concept. 

Research is needed to help airport practitioners determine the feasibility, merits, and challenges of airport landside vehicular congestion management pricing and guidelines for implementation.

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this research is to develop a guide on reducing airport landside vehicular congestion using pricing to change passenger behavior. The guide will include, at a minimum: 

• An overview of airport landside operations, management, and emerging trends
• The definition of airport landside congestion
• An evaluation of existing and emerging technologies for managing airport landside congestion
• An evaluation of broader regulatory constraints and framework
• An engagement strategy for stakeholder communication
• Case studies of at least two airport landside congestion pricing management programs and two non-airport examples, domestic and international, that include:
• Motivation for adopting congestion pricing at airports/metropolitan regions 
• History of the project
• Studies or prior research evaluated/conducted
• Implementation
• Data collection 
• Project timeline 
• Challenges
• Mode shift
• Lessons learned
• Technological considerations
• Stakeholder engagement
• Communication plan
• Overall conclusions from the case studies
• A roadmap, including decision-making criteria, for implementing landside congestion pricing by various airport categories (e.g., small, medium, large) 
• A slide deck presentation for executive communication and buy-in

RESEARCH PLAN

The research plan shall contain the appropriate interim deliverables for ACRP review and approval, including:

• A literature review of previous ACRP and non-ACRP studies regarding airport congestion pricing
• A data collection plan for accomplishing the research objective that includes the proposed case studies and selection criteria with a survey of U.S. airports to determine industry interest in implementing landside congestion pricing and implementation challenges
• An interim report with research results to date, an annotated outline of the guide, an analysis of results, next steps, and potential follow-on research ideas to be developed into problem statements

The research plan should also contain checkpoints with the ACRP panel, including:

• A kick-off web meeting to be held within 1 month of the Notice to Proceed
• A web meeting to discuss and approve the literature review
• A web meeting to discuss and approve the data collection plan
• An in-person meeting to discuss and approve the interim report

The final deliverables will include:  

• The guide
• A slide deck of the guide for decision-makers
• A research team's final report documenting all research steps, results, and analysis
• A Summary of Key Findings
• A Further Recommended Research Memo
• A technical memo titled “Implementation of Research Findings and Products”

STATUS: Proposals have been received in response to the RFP. The project panel will meet to select a contractor to perform the work.