A three-member team of graduate urban planning students from the Bloustein School tied for first place in the annual Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) University Design Competition for Addressing Airport Needs in the Airport Management and Planning Challenge category.
The ACRP competition is for U.S.-based undergraduate and/or graduate students to design innovative solutions that address airport issues to enhance the management, safety, capacity, and efficiency of the nation’s airports. In addition to receiving cash awards, first place winners have the opportunity to present their work at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and at a professional conference relating to their work. The competition also provides students with exposure to aviation and airport-related careers.
The Bloustein School team of Shannon Eibert MCRP ‘19, Ian Girardeau MCRP ‘19, and Jaime Phillips MCRP ‘19 were advised by Bloustein School Associate Professor Michael Smart. Their design, Addressing Airport Congestion as Traffic Takes Off in the Age of Uber and Lyft, examines potential solutions to address landside congestion caused by the operation of Transportation Network Companies (TNCs), such as Uber and Lyft, on airport facilities. A copy of the report may be found here.
Since their official introduction to airports in 2015, TNC mode share has risen dramatically compared to traditional airport access modes, including taxis, limousines, shared vans, personal vehicles, and public transportation. The team’s recommendations aim to reduce congestion at the terminal curbside, reduce CO2 emissions, streamline the passenger and driver experience, and recover the airport’s costs of providing services to TNCs operating at their facilities.
The Bloustein School team tied with a team from the School of Aviation and Transportation Technology at Purdue University, whose design is titled, Proposal of Mobile Application Design for Aging Travelers in Commercial Airports.
The Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP), a program of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, carries out applied research on problems that are shared by airport operating agencies not adequately addressed by other federal research programs. The ACRP undertakes research and other technical activities in a variety of airport subject areas involving administration, environment, legal, policy, planning, safety, human resources, design, construction, maintenance, and operations at airports. ACRP is able to draw on its targeted research to help U.S. university students be engaged in contributing innovative approaches to issues facing our nation’s airports and the National Airspace System.