PRT and Airport Design

[Jay Andress]

The recent postings by Walt and Jerry Schneider about suitability of PRT for office parks, has reminded me of my recent visits to Dallas and Cincinnati Airports. PRT and airports are such a natural combination. (While Heathrow is a step in the right direction it does not exploit the full potential of PRT and airports). Reasons for PRT at airports:

   1) Individual trips to individual destinations (using buses seems to be inconsistent with the very nature of airport travel and yet buses are used extensively at airports)

   2) The walking distances are terrible. In Cincinnati there is the half-mile walk from the car parking lot to the ticket counter, then the worse walk is from the ticket counter to the gate...at least a half-mile. As our population ages (including me!) these walks are getting even worse.

   3) Airports have lots of money for PRT and other fancy extras that municipalities and developers don't always have.

   4) Airports are controlled by a small group...Board of Supervisors, eliminating the hassle of selling the idea to the general public or conservative bankers.

 

  Obstacles...

   1)Security...how do you run everyone through security. This makes direct parking lot to airplane(don't even go to terminal) travel difficult, but I think it could be solved.

   2)Airports make most their money from the terminal operations/leasing and won't want to give it up. I imagine a study would show that those passengers going directly to their planes from the parking lot don't stop to shop anyway (I certainly don't shop if I'm rushing to a plane...only if I am sitting in an airport between flights).

   3)If flight is delayed where do people sit/congregate. I guess that they would go to the main terminal to shop and eat

  

   The opportunity for a wholesale redesign of airports would be a natural for PRT. I think we discussed this before but I keep thinking of it whenever I am walking through an airport.

 

                                                                         Jay

--

[Dennis Manning]

Jay:

 

I like your thoughts re building a new airport that takes full advantage of PRT. Creative designers could really get off on that. Everything from security, to parking, baggage handling, shopping, tourism, connecting to larger urban area, etc.

 

It goes to my contention that over time PRT (that includes DM posibilities) will have profound effects on land use.

 

Dennis

[Walter Brewer]

This was discused by several a week or two ago. Concepts ranging from automated placement of already seated passengers directly on aircraft, through PRT to gate area, and other extreme, detachable passenger pod for separate loading then attached to aircraft.

 Yes in many of those cases security procedures and facilities would be quite different.

 

As noted, San Diego's airport expansion plan is diametric opposite. Design to aid security, and mass transit advocates. Central security operations concentrated in one facility, far from gates, as part of a multimodal mass transit facility. Second priority, passenger convenience.

 

 Walt Brewer

[Dennis Manning]

People have been looking at new airport designs for quite some time. I recall such a design being presented at the PRT conference in Minneapolis in 1997. 

[Jerry Roane]

Dennis

I was lined up to speak to the airport people mover conference and my paper was accepted but then they wanted me to pay full price to attend the conference.  I asked for a reduction but obviously another conflicting interest did not want me there and required I pay them to work at their conference so I declined.  In that paper and abstract I described the Mall storefront as the airline counter.  It went into detail about how to let the customer experience drive airline operations and security was to be at the back room of the mall storefront and the high speed elevated system would be considered in the secure portion of the airport.  That would require the screeners kiss the butt of the airlines rather than the stupid way it is now with basically mall cops running the show driving away business.  In the mall model the security screen would have one security check person per airline store and that would require they hire enough of them to not run off business like they do now.  The fed takes a lot of PR hits for the idiotic way it operates airport screening.  All deservedly so.   It is like they have never considered making two lines over one line.  They get to seem more self important if they make you do stuff and wait for them.  A central screen location is the stupidity they have now on steroids.  The federal government post Katrina needs a PR makeover but instead they keep the airport screen as it was and the bottleneck.  Have they caught one terrorist at their screens because the terrorist couldn't stand to wait that long in a single file line?   The airlines do not deserve this abuse with no value added to their customers. It reflects poorly on the minds (or lack) at the fed. 

Jerry Roane