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Airport GrowthIn the 1950s, airports used to conjure up notions exotic, far-off places. The skies were the domain of corporate executives and diplomats, the very wealthy, the military and adventurers. Today airports and air travel are part of everyday life. The masses move by air, and worldwide their numbers are growing. Our planet’s billions of citizens are becoming increasingly mobile. The authoritative Airports Council International calculates that in 2006 there were 4.4 billion air trips – almost one per person worldwide! The distribution is, of course, not uniform. But international air travel is on an unrelenting course upward. Life today is not what it was 50 years ago. Family, friends and colleagues are now spread out over great distances. The frequency of people moving great distances, each time using two or more airports for each trip, is up. Airports are part of our lives – both as individuals who use them and as a nexus and symbol of civic life. |
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The International Civil Aviation Organization predicts that air traffic will grow at an annual rate of 3.5 percent over the next decade. That’s an overall figure. For international travel – typically involving longer distances – it will increase at the much higher rate of 5.2 percent. The regions of the world show some variation, but overall “less developed” countries are catching up with the industrialized world. for the foreseeable future more than others.
Large airports are huge land takings, and generators of severe environmental impacts – noise, emissions, chemical waste and runoff, highway traffic and more. Some airports have boundaries larger than Manhattan. Increasing numbers of hotels, meeting facilities, and travel-intensive businesses locate near a region’s airport. Today it has become common to refer to an airport city – much more than a transportation terminal and a place of significant real estate investment. More and more activities – even artistic and cultural events – are taking place at the airport.
It is helpful therefore to divide an airport into its airside and its landside. The airside comprises the runways, aprons, terminal gates and secure terminal area. On the landside are curbs, parking, ground transport, car rentals, and beyond. Both sides involve movements, and APMs play vital roles in each. The future may become even more creative with the design flexibility of PRT.
Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport is not only the world’s busiest airport, it is also a rich example of the integration of buildings and rubber-tired APMs on both airside and, about to open next year, on the landside as well. There are another landside-airside pair at Minneapolis-St. Paul that do so at a smaller scale with cable-drawn APMs.
Tampa, New York's JFK, and London Heathrow airports also use landside and airside APMs.
London-Heathrow just opened its huge Terminal 5 with an airside APMs spine, as well as a landside PRT linking remote parking to a large carpark adjacent to the main terminal.
Tampa Airport pioneered both airside and landside APMs as a means to make its facility user-friendly. |
An APM at New York’s JFK (and another Newark-Liberty) interconnects terminals on the landside, and also reach out to remote parking and regional transit. |