Approach of Modeling Passengers' Commuting Behavior for UAM Traffic in Hamburg, Germany

Abstract

Within the business model for urban air mobility (UAM), the passenger demand is a necessary input to build economic sustainable systems. This work aims to specify the UAM commuter demand in competition to other modes of transport by the example of the city of Hamburg in Germany. Based on pre-defined traffic cells by the city of Hamburg, a door-to-door traffic for commuter will be generated and distributed. Therefore, a discrete choice model will be used to predict the modal choice of passengers in the transport system. The resulting modal split in combination with the total market volume for commuter yields to the market share for commuting UAM traffic in Hamburg. Expecting a set of several itineraries in the city, a first statement about the catchment area indicates initial characteristics of a given vertiport network. By combining the market share for UAM in competition with the private car and a public transport system as well as the total market volume for commuting traffic, the passengers’ interest for each route of the itinerary set will be evaluated. The model allows a tracking of single passenger routes due to an investigation starting at an origin traffic cell and ending in a destination one. In comparison to a top-down approach, our model provides the opportunity to assess catchment areas for vertiports, find characteristics of the traveler and generate high and low demand itineraries.