Achieving a modal shift from air to rail is a critical priority for decarbonising Europe’s transport sector, requiring models that can capture multimodal passenger behaviour and assess network performance under varying policy and infrastructure scenarios. The Strategic Multimodal Evaluator developed in the MultiModX project, which integrates four core functions: (1) generating possible itineraries across air and rail mobility layers; (2) modelling passenger choice to distribute demand among alternatives; (3) assigning flows to services while respecting capacity constraints; and (4) computing performance indicators to evaluate effectiveness from infrastructure, regional, and passenger perspectives. The methodology is applied to a case study in Spain, examining three policy packages — baseline, multimodal incentivisation (integrated ticketing and CO 2 taxation), and flight bans —revealing limited impact on intra-Spain mobility but demonstrating the model’s capacity to capture shifts in travel patterns and infrastructure usage.
Delgado et al. (2026) studied this question.