Enhancing Catania airport system’s accessibility and competitiveness via Car Floating Data utilisation

Airport accessibility and territorial connections are already critical to current traffic levels. In southern Italy, specifically in Sicily, airport sites allow for transhipment and ensure territorial continuity with the Italian peninsula. The National Airport Plan and others have emphasised the importance of these sites, and it is assumed that they will have to play the role of ‘Hub of the Mediterranean’ in the future. Catania Airport recorded a little over 10 million passengers in 2023. However, a series of cyclical and random events forced the temporary closure of the site, creating various problems for departures and arrivals, which must be highlighted. Concerning accessibility by road, several studies have found nationwide that the airports closest to metropolitan areas have huge catchment areas in a short time. Southern regions have much more limited catchment areas than regions in northern Italy due to the poor qualitative and quantitative levels of road infrastructure. This work, therefore, analyses the accessibility of the area in front of Terminals A and C, comparing scenarios related to holidays, the summer season and two catastrophic events such as the volcanic ash eruption and the recent fire at Terminal A. By querying the Traffic Stats archive, comparing and analysing historical data on actual travel times and speeds on each road or route considering five different scenarios was possible. The study highlights the ease of use of this archive and the versatility in selecting the areas to be analysed. The results demonstrate how the use of traffic data can be helpful in monitoring and mitigating impacts related to road congestion related to connections with airport sites, suggesting that the managers of the respective infrastructures can implement short, medium and long-term actions and strategies to improve service levels and in general transport sustainability in the areas examined. The comparative analysis of different scenarios under critical conditions could be of help in revising the master plan since the latter is an urban planning tool aimed at forecasting, planning and programming airport development interventions, preparatory to the realisation of works within the airport sites, the areas identified for airport expansion, and the infrastructures connecting the surroundings.