LEVEL OF SERVICE ASPECTS OF PROVISION OF ACCESS TO AIRPORTS

Access to airports has traditionally been road based and there are clear indications that the taxi and the private car will continue to dominate as the primary surface access modes. Research into level of service concepts indicates that it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to bring public transport access modes up to a perceived equal and therefore competing level of service. Modal shifts of very significant proportions are conceivable only if the road based private modes are debased in service levels by very large increases in costs, congestion or other penalties which could be considered disutilities. The paper will report on level of service studies carried out at Loughborough on Heathrow Airport access modes which permit discriminant scaling and stated preference work which shows a lack of elasticity in modal choice with respect to four major variables of choice. (A) For the covering abstract see IRRD 865038.