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'Keep moving' at TIA curbside

The airport considers its options in looking for ways to relieve traffic congestion at the passenger pickup point.

By JEAN HELLER
Published February 18, 2005

TAMPA - In the old days, picking up a passenger from the baggage claim curbs at Tampa International Airport could be a nasty experience. Police often ordered motorists to move on even before their passengers showed up, and they weren't always nice about it.

Then TIA Executive Director Louis Miller replaced police with "traffic specialists," decreeing visitors would have a kinder, gentler curbside experience.

It was nice while it lasted.

Sometime in the near future, possibly before summer, guardians of the curbs will start taking a get-tough attitude again. The airport is growing so fast and has gotten so crowded that demands on curb space have outstripped their ability to accommodate.

At a Hillsborough County Aviation Authority workshop Thursday, the firm preparing the airport's master plan update said that both the lower-level curbside areas are operating well in excess of capacity: 316 percent on the red side and 375 percent on the blue side. The average stay for a car at the curb is 10.5 minutes, more than three times what airport officials want. The snarls often back up traffic to the street.

And if you don't think that frustrates airport visitors, ask Sharon Lister of Bradenton, who was trying to get to the baggage claim curb at TIA mid-morning Thursday to pick up her sister, who had just flown in from New York.

There were so many vehicles hanging out at the curb and in adjacent lanes that Lister couldn't move out of the through lane. Her sister finally sprinted to the car across several lanes of traffic.

"Don't get me started," Lister snapped when asked about the situation. "Don't get me started. Just don't get me started. Don't."

Miller understands that the congestion upsets people. He also understands that the new get-tough approach won't be met with happy smiles all around.

"I hope we can do this without (angering) any customers," Miller said. "We're going to give people alternatives. We've got to move them off the curbs."

The Aviation Authority could decide as early as next month when to implement the new get-tough policy and how to deal with those who violate it.

Miller said he does not want to return to the Nasty '90s at curbside, so he and the board are looking for ways to make banishment more palatable.

One plan is a cell-phone lot at the south end of the airport grounds. A lot under construction there will have 900 spaces when completed in June. It was intended to replace spaces lost in the remote economy lot while a new garage is under construction.

"Next year, after the garage is open, we're going to carve out some spaces in the new lot for people to park for free while they're waiting for arrivals," Miller said. "When the passengers are ready, they call on their cell phones and get picked up."

If the need gets sufficiently desperate, Miller said, he might ask the board to create the free cell-phone spaces this summer.

"We might even let people park for the first hour free in the short-term garage just to get them off those curbs," Miller said.

The airport's planner agreed.

"The biggest problem at the curbs is that passenger cars average wait times of 10.5 minutes, which is way above the three minutes you aim for," said Pete Ricondo of Ricondo & Associates, who is developing the updated master plan for TIA.

Miller said he doubted TIA could get wait times down to three minutes and would shoot for five. "That will make the problem go away," he said.

Congestion does not present the same problem on the ticketing level because drivers tend to drop off passengers and leave immediately.

Congestion is becoming chronic all over the airport. After months of record growth - passenger counts in January were 17 percent higher than a year earlier - parking is maxed out, spurring the creation of new lots and in a few years, more new garages.

The George Bean Parkway, the main airport road, will have to be widened by a lane in each direction.

Inside, something will have to be done about congestion on the third level of the Landside terminal, where passengers catch shuttles to the airsides. This problem has been developing since security crackdowns after Sept.11, when family and friends were barred from accompanying passengers to gates.

During peak travel times, non-passenger crowds stack up around shuttle lobbies. TIA put in rows of seats, which took up so much floor space that maneuvering through the lobby areas often resembles a rugby scrum.

"If we have to, we might pushthe walls of the terminal out to enlarge the lobby space," Miller said. "It would be an expensive proposition."

The crowding issue prompted Airport Authority chairman Al Austin to ask if the board should consider building a second terminal complex sooner.

"Maybe it's more important to build it 10 years out instead of 15 years and have excess capacity for a while instead of waiting until the existing facility is at or over capacity," Austin said.

But Miller said airlines, which would pick up some of the hundreds of millions of dollars in construction costs, would never buy into that plan.

"They'll only pay for what they needed three months ago," Miller said. "Airline planning horizon extends to where they'll have lunch tomorrow."

When the master plan is completed next January, it will have a complete timetable for changes and improvements at TIA, including for the construction of a new north terminal complex.

"Of course, it's only a plan," Miller said, "and plans are subject to change."

[Last modified February 18, 2005, 00:13:08]