CHAPTER 1

Purpose, Methodology, and Organization of This Guide

ACRP Research Report 266: Airport Curbside and Terminal Area Roadway Operations: New Analysis and Strategies, Second Edition (the Guide) is intended to assist airport operators and others in analyzing airport terminal area roadway and curbside operations and selecting strategies to mitigate congestion. The Guide, which is an update of ACRP Report 40: Airport Curbside and TerminalArea Roadway Operations, presents guidelines for estimating airport roadway requirements and capacities, recommended performance measures, valid and useful analytical methods, and innovative strategies to reduce traffic demands and mitigate congestion on terminal area and curbside roadway operations.

1.1 Purpose of the Guide

This Guide is intended for use by three primary user groups. The first user group consists of airport operators, including the staff responsible for planning, designing, and overseeing the day-to-day operations of airport terminal area and curbside roadways. The second user group includes city, regional, and state transportation planners who may not be familiar with airport roadway operations. A third user group consists of airport consultants engaged to conduct planning, environmental, design, and other projects on behalf of airport operators and other sponsors. Some users may have significant experience with airports or aviation, but little familiarity with traffic engineering or transportation planning principles. Other users may have experience in traffic engineering and transportation planning, but little knowledge of airport operations. This Guide is intended to assist both groups.

For users unfamiliar with airports, the Guide describes the unique operating characteristics of airport terminal area roadways and curbside areas and how their operations differ from those of urban streets and regional highways. The Guide presents methods for estimating existing and future requirements and provides alternative methods for analyzing operations on airport roadways.

1.2 Methodology

The Guide reflects information gathered through an extensive literature review, a survey of airport operators, and follow-on interviews with airport staff who have implemented innovative strategies to reduce traffic demand and relieve roadway congestion. The scope of this research included updating the Quick Analysis Tool for Airport Roadways (QATAR) macrosimulation model presented in ACRP Report 40 and used to analyze and evaluate airport curbside roadway operations and low-speed weaving. [The updated QATAR and a user guide are available on the National Academies Press website (nap.nationalacademies.org) by searching on ACRP Research Report 266: Airport Curbside and Terminal Area Roadway Operations: New Analysis and Strategies, Second Edition.] Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was not feasible to conduct field measurements or traffic surveys of airport roadway operations. Instead, to support the update of

the model, the research team conducted more than 10,000 tests or simulations of various curbside roadway configurations to determine their performance under varying traffic demands, as described in this Guide.

1.3 Organization of the Guide

This Guide consists of seven chapters and three appendices. Chapters 2 through 7 and Appendices A through C are briefly described in the following:

• Chapter 2: Framework for Analysis of Airport Roadways and Curbsides describes the types of vehicles and roadways typically found at airports and their unique operating characteristics. An overview is provided of (1) the hierarchy of analytical methods presented in Chapters 4 and 5 of this Guide (quick-estimation methods, macroscopic models, and microsimulation models) and (2) the concepts of capacity and level of service, as presented in the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM). [Note that as used in this report, “HCM” indicates Highway Capacity Manual 7th Edition: A Guide for Multimodal Mobility Analysis (2022) and previous editions of the HCM.]
• Chapter 3: Estimating Airport Roadway Requirements describes the data required to analyze existing roadway traffic operations and ways to gather these data. Two alternative methods for estimating future roadway requirements are presented, along with the challenges inherent in each method.
• Chapter 4: Analyzing Airport Terminal Area Roadways presents definitions of levels of service for airport terminal area roadway operations and a hierarchy of analytical methods and models for analyzing terminal area roadway operations, including low-speed weaving areas, capacities, and levels of service.
• Chapter 5: Evaluating Airport Curbside Operations presents definitions of levels of service for airport curbside roadway operations and a hierarchy of analytical methods and models for quickly estimating curbside roadway capacities and levels of service, including an update of the QATAR model that incorporates changes requested by frequent users of this model.
• Chapter 6: Improving Airport Curbside and Terminal Area Roadway Operations presents examples of commonly occurring airport curbside and roadway operational problems and overviews steps for analyzing and evaluating airport roadway improvements.
• Chapter 7: Innovative Strategies presents strategies to improve enforcement, reduce traffic demands, and manage roadway congestion that apply to all commercial-service airports. It also presents information allowing airport managers to evaluate which strategies are best suited for their airport.
• Appendix A: Glossary defines technical terms used in the Guide.
• Appendix B: Bibliography lists resource documents reviewed for this research project.
• Appendix C: Overview of the Curbside Analysis Methodology in the Quick Analysis Tool for Airport Roadways (QATAR) details the basic assumptions used in developing the QATAR curbside queuing model.