No surprises at the airport by the bay

Abstract

A new landside complex, that includes new roadways, an airport light rail system, and a ground transportation center, is being planned to meet the expansion needs of San Francisco International Airport (SFIA). Existing terminals are served by roadways that cannot be expanded without significant investment and disruption. Therefore, SFIA has developed the concept of a remote ground transportation center-connected to departure terminals by the airport light rail system-to remove courtesy shuttle and scheduled transit traffic from terminal roadways. The SFIA design team developed a computer simulation model to quantify the demand and performance of each element of the new landside complex, as well as the performance of the landside complex as a system. This presentation reviews the modeling approach, demonstrates the simulation animation, and discusses the way the design team used data from the simulation model to refine the landside complex concept.