Overview

Air and rail are not only competing modes of transport. The complementary capabilities and characteristics of these two modes fulfil the essential requirements of the market. The objective of the thesis was to demonstrate the necessity and importance of High-Speed Train inter-modal connections between European airports, in particular in response to passenger needs. There are numerous advantages to this proposal, principally that it releases runway and ATC resources, offers immediate relief to congestion, reduces negative environmental impacts, and finally improves ground access to airports.

In the case of air travel, passengers spend at least 3 hours travelling to the airport, walking and waiting at the airport. Travelling by rail the time spent reduces to 1 hour 10 min. Even if the time spent on train is much longer than the time spent in the air, under a certain distance the total journey time is shorter if the journey is undertaken by rail.

This thesis indicates that high-speed trains could replace flights of up to 750 kms. This distance takes into account the time travelled by each transport mode and the average speed of each mode.

The passenger market share of each mode depends on the passengers’ sensitivity to different travel attributes, such as cost (journey cost, cost to and from the airport/station), time (journey time, time to and from the airport/station, walking/waiting time) and attractiveness (frequency, competition, on-board services). These attributes, and especially passengers’ sensitivity to them, were investigated closely. According to the results of a questionnaire undertaken in France, economy travellers are most sensitive to flight cost, as opposed to business travellers, who tend to be much more sensitive to travel time. The following chart shows the sensitivity of economy and business travellers to each attribute.

A demand distribution model was introduced, considering sensitivity of passengers to different travel attributes. This model was applied for two origin destination pairs, Paris-London and Paris-Brussels. The breakdown of passengers choosing rail was 57% for the Paris-London route and 66% for the Paris-Brussels route.

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Full thesis

Innovative Research Business Area

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Antonia Cokasova