Optimum Design of Airport Enplaning Curbside Areas

Abstract

A new approach for design of enplaning curbside areas at airports incorporating the users' behavior was investigated. A design procedure based on the vehicular demand distribution over the doors of terminal building and along the enplaning curbside was developed. First, the traffic distribution around the doors of a terminal building based on the drivers' parking‐space preference, in the form of a binomial function, was analyzed. Second, weighting functions based on the users' door preference for unloading, in the case of more than one door, in the form of a modified binomial distribution, were developed and calibrated. By using the composite traffic distribution, a curb‐design computer program was developed to give the optimum number of doors, door locations, effective length, and practical dynamic capacity of the curbside area. A new interactive curb planning and design methodology based on the findings of the research was proposed. The new method, after determining the vehicular demand, will optimize curbside area requirements such that the capacity of designed curb would be greater than demand.