To achieve the European goal of seamless door-to-door (D2D) travel, air transport needs to be part of an intermodal network that includes other available transportation means such as rail, road and sea. Such a network would address connections between a big metropolis and the surrounding area up to country-wide level.  Gathering on 14 September in Naples, in the X-TEAM D2D presented its research findings on integrating air traffic management and air transport in urban and suburban environments and identifying enabling technologies applicable in the short term and longer term.

With the project coming to a close on 30 September, the event was an opportunity for the X-TEAM D2D researchers to present their scientific results. The project designed a concept of operations (ConOps) for the definition of an integrated multimodal transport network, implementing a total traffic management (TTM) approach, including a high-level description of the system architecture and related main components. It also identified the associated system requirements, as well as expected user requirements over the next decades, and designed a dedicated service blueprint to model the interaction of the passengers with the infrastructure throughout the whole D2D journey. This identified the main organisational needs and policy steps for the transition from the current situation towards the integrated X-TEAM D2D defined infrastructure.

Moving from the current situation where each leg of the journey has its own service, to an integrated transport service that is unique to each passenger for the whole D2D journey, led to the formulation of the X-TEAM D2D ConOps, paving the way to total traffic management for all modes of transport where travellers’ preferences have a high priority.

To validate the X-TEAM D2D ConOps, two performance areas were assessed: Journey efficiency – measured in terms of total distance travelled, total travel time, and average travel speed per passenger); and quality of travelling for passengers, based on the waiting time at interconnections.

Recognising the value of synergies and knowledge sharing, event was also an opportunity to hear the results from other exploratory research projects addressing modality, including SYN+AIR and Modus.

Closing the event, a round table with main stakeholders was opened, where comments on the results achieved by the projects and suggestions for their future deployment were welcomed. Representatives from ACI Europe, Bologna Airport, Airport Region Council, and European Passengers' Federation took part to the very productive discussion.

This project has received funding from the SESAR Joint Undertaking under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 891061