ATM Role in Intermodal Transport

Topic description

Specific Challenge:

Air Traffic Management (ATM) and Air Transport are part of an intermodal transportation system. In an intermodal transportation system, a passenger’s journeys consists of a succession of different transport modes, which depends on transport availability, but also on individual preferences regarding travel time, comfort, environmental impact and other criteria. Considering ATM as an integrated part of an intermodal transportation system will make it possible to optimize the performance of the overall transportation system and the complete door-to-door journey, instead of optimizing the individual modalities.

Seeing air transportation at the heart of an integrated, seamless, energy efficient, diffused intermodal system, Flightpath 2050 set the goal to allow travellers to reach their target destination within Europe within a maximum door-to-door time of four hours. Passengers should experience a seamless journey with full connectivity. In order to be able to reach these ambitious goals, a close collaboration between different transportation modes is required. A better understanding is needed on how ATM can better contribute to improve passenger’s intermodal journeys and how to increase the performance of the overall transportation system.

Research activities should explore the connection and dependence between ATM/Air Transportation and other transport modes. Proposals should address the main barriers and identify how Air Transport, in particular urban and extended urban mobility, can evolve by efficiently connecting information and services with other transport modes to achieve the 4hr door to door ACARE goal and a seamless journey.

Proposals may investigate how sharing ATM information with other transportation modes or taking into account information from other transportation modes in ATM decision making could improve the individual journeys and the overall transportation systems.

Research activities may also investigate the legal feasibility and potential impact of introducing regulations aiming at optimizing the overall transportation system and allowing passengers to make informed choices, e.g. by proving more information on the environmental impact (carbon footprint, other emissions and noise) or by introducing a route charging scheme taking into account environmental criteria and the availability of other transportation modes for this route for defining the route charges.

Further, research activities may also study the feasibility of considering multimodal aspects (like the availability of modal choices) during all three phases of Air Traffic Flow and Capacity Management (ATFCM) activities and analyse the potential impact on the performance of the overall transportation and passengers door-to-door journeys.

Proposals may explore the possibility of involving passengers in playing an active role in co-designing door-to-door services and generating data to incrementally define and improve new interconnected services following the approach of “participatory design”.

Proposal need to demonstrate their complementarity to activities launched by the European Commission and potentially other transport areas (i.e. rail, road, water) to ensure interoperability and delivery of harmonised services to realise cross-modal performance.

Activities are linked to ACARE action areas 1.1 (low carbon transport systems), 1.2 (design and implement an integrated, intermodal transport system) and 1.3 (door to door targets).

This topic is also linked with topic SESAR-ER4-25-2019 (ATM Performance) which aims at defining ATM performance indicators better capturing the ATM contribution to the performance of the transportation system.

Proposals are expected to contribute to better integrate and connect ATM and air transportation with other modalities, to improve passenger experience during door-to-door journeys and in doing so, contribute to reaching the FlightPath2050 goals, in particular the 4h door-to-door target and the seamless journey.