The provision of taxicab services to US airport patrons are the result of complex and intricate arrangements between airports and various external stakeholders. The following outline is employed in this thesis to permit a thorough examination of these complicated arrangements, from which recommendations will be made to develop supply-side airport taxicab service improvements benefitting both airport patrons and the taxicab service providers.
Development of US Airport Ground Transportation Services: Chapter 2 discusses: the development of airport ground transportation in the US; how ground access issues have impacted US airports and their ground transportation services; previous transportation planning methods used to examine airport ground transportation issues; and the need for new research methods to examine these issues within the context of a continually evolving economic, political and social backdrop.
Governance Theory and US Airport Taxicab Planning Activities: Chapter 3 identifies the shortcomings of traditional transportation planning methods in studying airport ground transportation issues. The chapter will also introduce governance theory with its examination of the interactions, engagements, and relationships between actors, and describe how this theory can be used as a viable transportation planning research method in which US airports and their ground transportation issues can be examined, with the results used to address contemporary transportation planning issues.
Existing US Airport Taxicab Planning Arrangements: Chapter 4 explores the existing associations or networks whereby US airports, taxicab operators, taxicab drivers, and outside transport regulatory agencies engage into meaningful interactions regarding airport taxicab planning activities. Specifically, the chapter will examine those networks involving these actors at the local, regional, and national levels, as well as those networks that transcend individual or static levels.
Methods: Chapter 5 describes the design and use of a mixed methods approach combining quantitative and qualitative research methods (i.e., surveys, interviews, and document reviews) to acquire the necessary data from participating US airports in which to undertake an examination of US airport taxicab planning activities. The chapter also identifies how the collected research data was triangulated to increase the veracity of the findings, and how the collected data was integrated into the development of case studies.
Survey Findings: Chapter 6 analyzes the data collected from a survey of the 173 US airports classified as hub airports by the FAA. From the survey data, findings were documented concerning the airport staff responsible for airport taxicab planning initiatives, the form and nature of such engagements between US airports and external actors responsible for providing airport taxicab services, and the influence these groups have on the creation and implementation of airport taxicab planning initiatives.
Interview and Case Study Findings: Chapter 7 evaluates the data procured from both on-site interviews and subsequent document reviews with selected US hub airports in regard to the use of governance in airport taxicab planning initiatives. The results will be used to ascertain how airport governance structures and processes are used in improving US airport taxicab services, to isolate the barriers that impede the development of effective and efficient US airport taxicab services, and to uncover opportunities whereby US airports can map out plans for supply-side taxicab service improvements.
Conclusions: Chapter 8 summarizes the quantitative and qualitative research findings. Based upon those findings, the remainder of the chapter is dedicated to offering recommendations to US airports in their efforts to foster supply-side taxicab service improvements to benefit air passengers, as well as those actors who are involved with providing airport taxicab services.
Chapter 2: Development of Airport Ground
Transportation Services
Historical information has been used to enrich organizational-related studies (Daily, Dalton and Canella Jr. 2003). Thus, the following brief history of the development of airport ground transportation services will provide an insight into airports, their taxicab planning activities, and how these planning activities are associated to the mitigation of associated air quality issues.
Historically, airports throughout the world were owned and operated by government (Oum et al. 2006). As airports outside the US were privatized commencing in the 1980s (Oum et al. 2006), a number of these newly commercialized airports continued integrating high occupancy bus and rail-based transportation services into their operations as a strategic business decision to further their accessibility to the traveling public (Coogan et al. 2008). Taxicab services continue to be made available for airport patrons under a formal business arrangement with the newly privatized airport, with taxicabs being operated under a highly regulated or increasingly regulated taxicab industry (Bentivogli 2009; Oshima, Fukuda, Fukuda, and Satiennam 2007). However, the long travel time between airports and their respective urban service areas discourage the large scale use of taxicabs for these particular airport-based trips if other convenient and less costly options are available (Coogan et al. 2008).
On the other hand, US airports continue being owned and operated by government (Bricker and Cleary 2008), dependent upon multi-lane highways and the private automobile to handle the bulk of airport-generated trips (Coogan et al. 2008; Leigh Fisher Associates et al. 2002). As few US airports have, or are in the process of obtaining direct access to rail-based transportation modes (Wong and Baker 2013; National Association of Railroad Passengers 2010), US airports are dependent upon taxicabs as they are the most commonly used public transportation mode used by air passengers for airport-based trips (Coogan et al. 2008). The deregulation of the US transportation industry in the 1970s and 1980s resulted in both an increasing number of airports
opening their taxicab systems to a larger number of service providers while reducing overall governmental oversight of taxicab services (Cooper et al. 2010).
A small, but significant percentage of air passengers worldwide utilize taxicabs and other airport ground transportation modes for their airport-based trips (Coogan et al. 2008). Consequently, airports continue to be tasked with the responsibility of facilitating ground access options for transit-dependent air passengers. US transportation deregulation efforts has resulted in airports becoming less able than their foreign counterparts to unilaterally undertake plans and programs designed to influence the quality of the services provided by taxicabs and other airport ground transportation services. Through exploring the interactions and engagements between US airports and the parties involved with providing taxicab services to airport patrons, insights may be discovered that give US airports the ability to successfully achieve planning initiatives to foster supply-side taxicab improvements that, over the long term, increase the air passenger ground transportation modal share.
Traditional transportation planning methodologies that have been used to examine airport ground access and related transportation issues in the past will be identified in this discussion, as well as the shortcomings of these traditional methods in addressing contemporary airport ground transportation issues involving the quality of such services. In order to address these shortcomings, an alternative methodology utilizing governance theory will be introduced and used in this research to explore supply-side taxicab service improvements to achieve desirable air passenger ground transportation modal shares in addressing airport ground access issues that impinge upon an air passenger’s overall travel experience.