Changing the road transport for a rail transport to access a Brazilian airport

This paper reports a study aimed to assess whether passengers would change the road transport -- whether individual transport (IT) or passenger bus transport (BT) -- for the rail transport to reach or leave the International Airport Tancredo Neves in Confins, State of Minas Gerais, Brazil. It also sought to identify the passengers’ preference between the two transport modes. The study was built on two techniques: a questionnaire-based survey that approached 296 passengers, and a stated preference survey, which was answered by 223 of them. The results pointed out that most of the respondents were keen on changing the IT and BT for rail transport to reach and leave the airport. The rail transport had a good level of acceptance (84%), which, was, however, contradicted by the stated preference results: 73% of the respondents stated they do prefer the individual transport. One of the possible reasons for the controversial results may be the way the data was collected and arranged in this study. The conclusion of the study was that the rail transport enjoyed good acceptance amongst the respondents when imagined in a static scenario.