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Vertiport Performance Analysis for On-Demand Urban Air Mobility Operation in Seoul Metropolitan Area

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Abstract

This paper presents a methodology to evaluate the vertiport performance by analyzing the average waiting time for electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles to use the vertiport. A series of analytical processes for vertiport design, demand prediction, and performance analysis is presented. To design the vertiport layout, we propose a novel algorithm that evaluates the surrounding obstacles by considering current regulations. The potential demand for air taxi services by urban air mobility (UAM) as multimodal transportation is predicted by a discrete choice model that estimates the probability of choosing an air taxi service given the time saving of UAM. Then, the sensitivity of demand was analyzed for the catchment area, travel cost, and the number of passengers on board. The sensitivity analysis showed that the demand for UAM was sensitive to all factors considered. Vertiport performance is evaluated by comparing the expected number of operations derived from the UAM demand to the vertiport capacity. The proposed methodology was applied to a vertiport in the Seoul metropolitan area for the initial UAM operations. The results show that having one less gate significantly increases the waiting time of the UAM when the utilization factor of the waiting queue is high. However, the average waiting time is less than 20 min (the maximum hover time of eVTOL vehicles) if the vertiport has a sufficient number of gates, depending on the traffic volume of UAM. Therefore, it is essential to determine the number of gates considering the expected traffic volume to ensure safe UAM operations.

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Abbreviations

ASC:

alternative specific constant

CBD:

central business district

eVTOL:

electric vertical takeoff and landing

FAA:

Federal Aviation Administration

FATO:

final approach and take-off area

KTDB:

Korea Transport Database

MD:

maximum dimension

MNL:

multinomial logit

ODM:

on-demand mobility

TAZ:

traffic analysis zone

TLOF:

touchdown and liftoff area

TTS:

tip-to-tip span

UAM:

urban air mobility

\(C_\text {gate}\) :

Gate capacity

\(C_\text {taxiway}\) :

Taxiway capacity

\(C_\text {TLOF}\) :

TLOF capacity

\(C_\text {vertiport}\) :

Vertiport capacity

\(F_\text {UAM}\) :

Fare of UAM vehicle

\(N_\text {gate}\) :

Number of gates in vertiport

\(N_\text {TLOF}\) :

Number of TLOFs in vertiport

\(P_\text {UAM}\) :

Probability of choosing UAM trip (i.e., modal share of UAM)

\(P_{0}\) :

Probability of having no vehicles in queue

R :

Radius of catchment area

\(\text {TC}_{m}\) :

Travel cost of mode m, \(\forall m \in \mathcal {M}\)

\(\text {TT}_\text {auto, access}\) :

Access time by automobile

\(\text {TT}_\text {auto, egress}\) :

Egress time by automobile

\(\text {TT}_\text {eVTOL}\) :

Cruising time of eVTOL vehicle from departure vertiport to arrival vertiport

\(\text {TT}_{m}\) :

Travel time of mode m, \(\forall m \in \mathcal {M}\)

\(\text {TT}_\text {UAM}\) :

Total travel time of multi-modal UAM trip

\(V_{m}\) :

Utility value of mode m, \(\forall m \in \mathcal {M}\)

\(V_\text {UAM}\) :

Utility value of UAM trip

\(W_{q}\) :

Average waiting time for vehicle in queue

a :

Length of vertiport candidate site

b :

Width of vertiport candidate site

h :

Height of vertiport candidate site

\(n_\text {PAX}\) :

Number of passengers on board a UAM vehicle

\(t_{\text {arr}}\) :

Mean elapsed time for arrival operation of UAM vehicle

\(t_{\text {dep}}\) :

Mean elapsed time for departure operation of UAM vehicle

\(t_{\text {gate}}\) :

Mean elapsed time for turnaround of UAM vehicle

\(t_{\text {taxi}}\) :

Mean elapsed time for taxi operation of UAM vehicle

\(t_{\text {window}}\) :

Time window

\(\alpha ^{\text {time}}_{m}\) :

Coefficient of travel time of mode m, \(\forall m \in \mathcal {M}\)

\(\alpha ^{\text {cost}}_{m}\) :

Coefficient of travel cost of mode m, \(\forall m \in \mathcal {M}\)

\(\lambda \) :

Arrival rate of vehicles approaching vertiport

\(\mu \) :

Service rate of vertiport

\(\rho \) :

Queue utilization factor

\(\Theta \) :

Set of all possible approach/departure path angles

\(\mathcal {E}\) :

Set of vertiport elements (e.g., TLOF, gate, and taxiway)

\(\mathcal {M}\) :

Set of available transport modes (e.g., UAM, public transport, private car)

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by 2021 Korea Aerospace University faculty research grant.

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  1. School of Air Transport, Transportation, and Logistics, Korea Aerospace University, 76 Hanggongdaehak-ro, Goyang, 10540, Republic of Korea

    Byeong Tak Park, Hyeonmi Kim & Sang Hyun Kim

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Park, B.T., Kim, H. & Kim, S.H. Vertiport Performance Analysis for On-Demand Urban Air Mobility Operation in Seoul Metropolitan Area. Int. J. Aeronaut. Space Sci. 23, 1065–1078 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42405-022-00505-z

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