Research Approach to Integrating Advanced Air Mobility into Transportation Demand Modeling

Advanced air mobility (AAM) is emerging as a transformative transportation option for urban and regional areas, offering a potential alternative to long intracity and intercity trips currently dependent on surface transportation. Public agencies are keen to understand how to integrate this new mode into a multimodal transportation system and develop effective strategies for planning, managing, and optimizing resources for both current and future needs. From a transportation planning perspective, modeling a future AAM network could be solved as a centralized problem, either for one operator or for the collective behavior of multiple operators. Meanwhile, passengers make choices among enhanced options following the user equilibrium principle in travel demand modeling (TDM). This paper addresses the challenge of incorporating AAM into the TDM framework while ensuring a realistic representation of AAM networks and traveler mode choices. Our study proposes a research approach to integrate AAM into a four-step transportation analysis zone (TAZ)-based demand model, achieving a new equilibrium of the multimodal transportation system through an iterative algorithm. The methodology includes: 1) coding the AAM network in demand modeling; 2) transferring the AAM disutility function from the existing literature; 3) applying airspace analysis to estimate flying distance and time between TAZs; 4) determining initial vertiport locations by solving an extended multiple-allocation p-hub median problem; and 5) refining the vertiport locations iteratively by running the enhanced demand model and a multiple-allocation p-hub maximal covering problem. To demonstrate the operability of the approach, we conducted a case study in the Tampa Bay metropolitan area, applying the methodology to the Florida Statewide Model. This AAM-integrated demand model serves as a decision support tool for public agencies, metropolitan planning organizations, AAM operators, and other stakeholders. It provides guidance for vertiport development and intermodal connectivity enhancement as well as facilitates the evaluation of AAM technological advancement, infrastructure enhancement, and regulatory options for regional mobility.