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Designing Efficient Taxi Pickup Operations at Airports

Author(s)
da Costa, David Carvalho Teixeira; de Neufville, Richard
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Downloadde Neufville_Designing efficient.pdf (2.096Mb)
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Abstract
This paper provides a practical procedure for designing efficient taxi pickup operations at airports. How to do this effectively is an open question. Solutions are not available, and practices vary. They reflect different approaches to and lack of research on the subject. The solutions are often unsatisfactory. At many airports, passengers routinely suffer long waits outdoors, exposed to the elements, after a tiring journey. Such disagreeable experiences are avoidable. Designing efficient taxi pickup operations at airports is problematic. The peculiarities of the process preclude easy solutions. First, the process involves queuing, so system performance is a nonlinear function of the loads. Second, it features unstable transient situations, since travelers typically arrive in bulk over short periods. Third, traffic is significantly differentiated and consists of a wide variety of groups implying different service characteristics. Standard results from queuing theory thus do not have a useful application to this problem. The design process uses simulation that is based on detailed observation of local practices. It involves four steps: (a) detailed local measurements of the arrival of both travelers and taxis, and the service rates provided by taxis in different queuing positions; (b) creation and validation of a simulation model sufficiently detailed to account for these realities; (c) exploration of design alternatives to estimate the characteristics of the service they would provide; and (d) selection of a preferred design that properly balances efforts to minimize average and extreme wait times. The paper demonstrates the procedure through application to Lisbon International Airport, Portugal.
Date issued
2012-11
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/81760
Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division
Journal
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board
Publisher
Transportation Research Board of the National Academies
Citation
da Costa, David Carvalho Teixeira, and Richard de Neufville. “Designing Efficient Taxi Pickup Operations at Airports.” Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board 2300, no. 1 (December 1, 2012): 91-99.
Version: Author's final manuscript
ISSN
0361-1981

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