Mobility Impact Assessment of Innovative Aircraft inside the European Multimodal Transport Network

The Clean Sky Joint Technology Initiative (JTI) within the EU Horizon 2020 Framework Programme proposes to introduce new concept aircraft and rotorcraft to replace reference technology counterparts at different time scales (2020/2035/2050). An increasing global demand for efficient air mobility and transportation systems will foster the development of highly optimized transportation solutions. In a future context of advanced intermodal and multimodal transport systems, particular importance will be given by the regional connections performed by innovative aircraft able to manage trips with effective "door to door" travel time within 4 hours. The paper presents a new way of predicting the mobility impact of new aircraft configurations on the current and future European transport network. The methodology, developed in the framework of the DEPART2050 project, has been implemented to show how innovative aircraft and rotorcraft connections could coexist and improve the current and future networks of high-speed train, highways, commercial aircraft operations, quantifying the consequent benefits. A case study representing the European intermodal/multimodal network is shown in order to illustrate the potential of the methodology. A complete mobility analysis of the entire European intermodal network is presented, and the results are described in detail.