The COVID-19 pandemic proved to be an existential public health and economic crisis for the airport system. An interview study was conducted using Amsterdam Airport Schiphol as a use case to prepare for future public health disruptions. The study aimed to uncover key experiences and lessons learned by an airport system during the COVID-19 pandemic by interviewing 16 experts from airport operators, airlines, public health agencies, security services, and the government. After thematic analysis, four themes emerged. The first theme addressed the limited readiness of the airport system; the COVID-19 pandemic seemed unimaginable regardless of prior experiences with infectious diseases or weak signals. The second theme depicts an airport system running behind the facts, one that had difficulties implementing operational interventions and had to deal with extensive reorganisations. The third theme illustrated the complex relational dynamics within the airport system, such as the hesitancy of public health stakeholders towards aviation stakeholders and the government utilising a top-down approach. Finally, theme four provides lessons learned for the future whereby actively fostering a systemic approach, sensemaking capabilities, and informal relations are recommended. Current constructions like Crisis Management Teams and the Airport Operations Centre support these learnings. Further reflection and operationalisation of the study's findings are critical to proactively supporting the airport system's transition from a potential pandemic liability to a strategic asset in mitigating public health disruptions.@en

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the existential public health and economic fragilities of the civil aviation industry. To prevent future public health disruptions, the civil aviation industry is gaining interest in becoming more “resilient” but rarely elaborates on its meaning, hampering decision-making and strategy development. When looking into the academic literature it seems that a proliferation of resilience-related concepts occurred. Although enriching resilience, it also dilutes its meaning and reduces its use for practice. This paper aims to create concept clarity regarding resilience by proposing a categorization of resilience. Based upon a scoping review, this categorization dissects resilience into four reoccurring aspects: fragility, robustness, adaptation, and transformation. This categorization is expected to support sensemaking in disruptive times while assisting decision-making and strategy development on resilience. When applying this categorization in the civil aviation and public health context, the transformative aspect seems underused. Further research will focus on maturing the categorization of resilience and its use as a sensemaking tool.@en

Many people believe that low digital skills are only a problem of the elderly. However, the group of analogue or non-digital travellers is much larger and much more diverse than that. In the Netherlands alone, it is estimated that a group of 3–4 million people is not digitally able enough to make use of digital services. This is due to several reasons. In order to make use of digital mobility services, users need to be able and willing to use digital services. In transport, especially for demand responsive transport (DRT) services, the lack of digital skills can create a barrier for people to make use of the service. Based on insights from literature and interviews about digital skills, we have categorized the different groups of non-digital travellers, and created five need-based personas. On the basis of this, we formulated user requirements and design recommendations for mobility services, and for DRT services specifically.

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To gain ridership, bus services need to offer more than just high frequencies. An attractive system design for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is a result of various configurational choices concerning infrastructure, rolling stock and operations. To find out which configurations are preferred by potential and current passengers, a Discrete Choice Experiment was carried out in The Netherlands. For this study, eight BRT characteristics were included. Results (n = 1019) show that four characteristics are valued the most: frequency, service hours, reliability and stop spacing. The attractiveness of three different service formulas or configurations is evaluated. The more conventional bus configuration is preferred by the majority of the respondents. However, a considerable amount (25%) of respondents that prefer this configuration does not consider using this service formula. Configurations that either address offering more passenger comfort or higher capacity, do seem to be attractive to distinct passenger segments who are more likely to actually use the service. These appealing BRT configurations address different types of passenger segments and therefore could coexist on certain routes.@en

The aviation industry is constantly making compromises when designing comfortable airplane cabins. Providing passengers with a pleasant acoustic environment without adding weight to the cabin structure is a field of tension that challenges cabin interior designers. The aim of this study was to investigate whether noise levels affect the comfort and physical discomfort experienced by airplane passengers, and whether control influences comfort perception. To this end, 30 participants experienced three conditions (silence, aircraft engine noise at 75 dB, and the same noise with the ability to use earplugs), and comfort and discomfort were measured using a questionnaire. It was concluded that aircraft engine noise negatively affected the airplane passengers’ comfort experiences. Having the ability to control this noisy environment with earplugs resulted in the lowest reported physical discomfort.@en

As city-level modal splits are outcomes of city functions, it is essential to understand whether and how city attributes affect modal splits to derive a modal shift toward low-emission travel modes and sustainable mobility in cities. This study elucidates this relationship between modal splits and city attributes in 46 cities worldwide, proposing a two-step data mining framework. First, using the K-Means method, we classify cities into private-vehicle-, public-transit-, and bicycle-dominant groups based on their modal splits. Second, we categorize city attributes into environmental, socio-demographic, and transportation planning factors and quantify their interlocked impacts on cities' modal splits via the decision tree method. We observe that the socio-demographic factor has the highest impact on determining the cities' modal splits. In addition, high population density and employment rate are positively associated with low-emission travel modes. High gasoline tax and low public transit and taxi fares often make people reconsider possessing private vehicles. On the other hand, extreme weather conditions (e.g., hot temperatures) can prevent bicycle usage. Our contribution expands the impact of introduced city planning and policies for modal shifts toward a real-world paradigm and we present implications of the proposed framework in developing practical modal shift strategies.

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The outbreak of COVID-19 demonstrated the fragility of the transportation system and its Multimodal Transport Hubs (MTHs). Global travel reduced dramatically, leading to an existential crisis in MTHs. To cope with the pandemic, MTHs implemented multiple resilient measurements including social distancing, rapid testing regimes, and infrared cameras. Although these measurements are valuable tools, this research advocates to transcend resilient measures and move towards antifragility by applying a systems thinking approach. As Nassim Taleb (2013) defines: “Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.” Our goal is to contribute to a long-term future of the transportation system by transforming MTHs into a tool to effectuate antifragility during the management of health disruptions.@en

De toegang tot het internet en GPS leidt tot een duidelijke trend in de ov-wereld: digitalisering van ov-diensten. In vergelijking met vaste buslijnen heeft dit onder meer een hoger financieel rendement voor de vervoerder en presteert het (in theorie) beter op duurzaamheid. Toch valt er flinke winst te behalen op de gebruikerservaring. Met name analoge reizigers zullen een barrière ervaren om gebruik te (blijven) maken van vraaggestuurde busdiensten. In dit artikel wordt (de omvang van) het probleem geschetst, inclusief een verhelderende blik op deze gebruikersgroep.@en

The boundaries between collective and individual transport are fading. Current solutions for payment and planning of trips are suboptimal for journeys that span across individual, collective and shared transport modalities. The discussion around these innovations often tends towards public authorities needing to strengthen their integrating role, or towards the private companies developing key innovations. We argue that focusing on only one of these perspectives, either integration or innovation, is likely to lead to what we call ‘subtopias’. Furthermore, we discuss and resolve the conflict between the two roles based on four different scenarios, ranging from nightmare to utopian dream. Our claim is that a balance is needed between, rather than a prevalence for private and public, for integrated and innovative mobility services to manifest themselves. As we see it, authorities will need to direct, harmonize and coordinate specific elements of personal mobility systems in order to be able to facilitate a seamless multi-modal mobility experience for travelers.@en

The problem of physical inactivity, caused by both lifestyle and work-related factors, is affecting an ever greater number of the office-based workforce. In addition to this, physical inactivity has been associated with an increased risk for various chronic diseases as well as various musculoskeletal disorders. As the majority of an individual’s time is spent at work, a means of introducing more activity into the workplace environment would appear to provide potentially the most effective solution. One of these potential solutions is that of dynamic workstations. In a controlled laboratory setting, the biomechanical, physiological, subjective and performance effects of two dynamic workstations were contrasted against two more conventional workstations. Measures assessed included physical activity and percent of heart rate reserve. The performance of basic computer and office tasks was assessed using a standardized battery of tasks included a typing task, a reading task, a telephone task, a task examining mouse dexterity and a set of cognitive tasks. The set of cognitive tasks included two reaction tasks, a memory test and an Erikson flanker test. To determine the acceptability of these workstations, subjective experiences of the participants were recorded using a questionnaire.@en

This paper presents an embarking and disembarking process for the hyperloop, a future high-speed transportation of passengers and goods in tubes. A concept of the (dis)embarking process has been designed and tested with two experiments. The first experiment was performed to compare the new concept to one that is more similar to the current embarking setup of trains on the aspects of efficiency and experience. Participants were asked to (dis)embark in the test settings that simulate the new concept and the conventional situation with luggage. As a result, new passenger flow saves 40% of the time for vehicles to stay on the platform. Follow-up questionnaires and interviews with the participants show that the proposed passenger flow gives a better experience in terms of efficiency, seamlessness and friendliness. The new solution increases the number of doors, which increases the manufacturing complexity and the chance of failure. Narrowing the door size minimizes this effect. Subsequently, a second experiment has been carried out to study the influence of door width on (dis)embarking efficiency and passenger experience following a similar method. It turns out that narrowing the door width does not noticeably influence the embarking time, but the disembarking time does increase. Interviews show that half of the participants sense a negative experience with narrower doors, while the other half do not notice a difference.

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Interferences during the boarding procedure are one of the main reasons of delay and increased turnaround time, becoming a relevant problem for airlines. Observations of the boarding process and questionnaires inside the aircraft revealed three main bottlenecks during the boarding process: (1) Hand luggage: Storage space is not sufficient and/or not used efficiently; (2) Preparation: Passengers are not well prepared for the boarding process; and (3) Communication: Audio announcements are unclear and unfocused. By translating these bottlenecks as possibilities for improvement, solutions were designed for the airport and aircraft interiors to reduce boarding time and improve the passenger boarding experience. Concepts ranged from an app to scan your hand luggage at home and make a reservation for overhead bin space; to a redesigned waiting area to help passengers prepare for boarding; to new boarding methods and redesigned aircraft seats. In this paper, several design concepts are presented in more detail.

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Airplane boarding is a time-consuming procedure due to a number of factors. First of all, passengers cannot pass each other in the aisles, but also stress is experienced in finding the seat or the space to store hand luggage and some passengers repack their luggage in the aisle. To reduce boarding time and improve the overall boarding experience a light guiding hand luggage system (GHL-System) was developed within the PASSME project. Due to the GHL passengers in the airplane see a light in the overhead bin which will shine more bright coming closer. This GHL-system did reduce stress levels while boarding and indicated a time saving of 3-4 minutes on a Boeing 737-800 flight with 189 passengers. Indicating a personal luggage spot located near the passenger seat might solve the problem of passengers not being able to find their space. Further research is needed on actual flight conditions to prove the effect of this system.@en

The passenger experience while boarding an airplane can be low. To improve the experience a light guiding system was developed which allocates and displays the passengers luggage space in the overhead bin. The allocated space is guided by a light strip in front of the display that blinks when a passenger comes close to their allocated luggage space. A test was done with groups of 18 passengers to compare the traditional way of boarding with the new way of boarding and the experience was significantly improved. The system has potential, but more studies with larger groups and in a real flight are needed to check if this effect is still there.@en

To save fuel costs, lightweight designs and materials are preferred for aircraft interiors. One of the challenges for aircraft seats is to reduce weight without compromising passenger comfort, or perhaps even while increasing comfort. This case study describes three different projects on lightweight designs for aircraft seats, using three-dimensional (3D) scanning methods (Franz, Kamp, Durt, Kilincsoy, Bubb, & Vink, 2011) to determine the ideal seat contour following the human body. The first project on upright sitting in an economy aircraft seat (Hiemstra-van Mastrigt, 2015) set out to collect imprints of the human body in a vacuum mattress by using a handheld 3D scanner to scan the body imprints and obtain a 3D surface. Subsequently, the different scans were superimposed in such a way that differences between the scans were minimized. Based on this “ideal curvature,” an adjustable seat pan concept was developed (Kuday, 2018). A similar 3D scanning method was applied in two other projects: first, developing a prototype for passengers sleeping sideways in a premium economy class aircraft seat (Lam et al., 2014) and, second, a human contour-based business class seating concept (Smulders et al., 2016). This case study concludes with advantages and recommendations for applying 3D scanning in similar projects.

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An airport can be a stressful place for passengers. One of the reasons to get stressed might be the result of poor wayfinding. Current wayfinding signs are often static, which makes them difficult to adapt to new situations. In contrast, dynamic signs can be updated and adjusted accordingly. Light projections can be used as dynamic signs. The aim of this study is to understand if the use of animated projections onto the floor can improve the wayfinding experience. Four animations have been developed and tested within a controlled testing environment of which one animation has been tested in a real airport environment. Results indicate that animation for wayfinding purposes should show a clear vertical motion to guide towards a certain direction. Additionally, higher velocity in the animation was perceived as more positive. The observation in the airport showed that a projection in clear daylight and on the floor is not noticed by the passengers walking by.@en