Analysis of European airports’ access and egress travel times using Google Maps

Door-to-kerb (access) and kerb-to-door (egress) times from and to 22 European airports are being analysed to draw conclusions on the durations of air travel chains with regard to the European Commission's Flightpath 2050 challenge of enabling four hours door-to-door intra-European air travel. This ambitious goal intends to foster a seamless European transport system, thereby increasing the travel comfort for passengers and strengthening the intermodal cooperation between different transport providers. Since air travel plays an essential role in connecting different European regions, this research focuses on analysing access and egress times to and from European airports in order to identify their potential in reducing overall door-to-door travel times. Travel durations and distances to and from airports, under varying conditions/parameters, have been gathered using the Google Maps Distance Matrix API. The received results have been mapped and utilised to establish linear regression models for European airport access and egress speeds. In multiple steps, significant variables and interaction terms have been added to improve the expressiveness of the linear regression. The analyses show great variations in airport access and egress speeds between European airports and even greater discrepancies between private (driving) and public (transit) transport. Airport access and egress times have to be reduced significantly for intra-European travel chains to converge on the European Commission's goal of four hours door-to-door air travel.