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AeroTrain on track for 2009
This time next year, a new rail system will be shuffling 6,755 passengers per hour by train through Dulles – Dulles Airport, that is.
Washington Dulles International Airport's AeroTrain, an underground automated people-mover system, is expected to be fully functional by the fourth quarter of 2009, according to James E. Bennett, president and CEO of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.
The authority hosted a media tour Aug. 18 to provide an update of its ongoing capital development program called Dulles Development, or D2.
The D2 program has been in progress since 2001 with $3 billion invested so far in airport improvements. That figure includes the $1.4 billion AeroTrain system, which will change the way passengers travel through Dulles Airport.
Today, the main terminal at Dulles has two levels: Departures, for ticket counters and security screening, and Arrivals, for baggage claim and exiting to the terminal parking lot.
Beginning next year, there will be four levels: Departures, Arrivals, a Security Mezzanine and the AeroTrain Main Terminal station. This station will become the transportation center of the airport, where many of the airport's 25 million annual passengers will connect via rubber-wheeled electric trains to the concourses and gates.
"We are nearing the end of a very long and very complicated project," Bennett said of the train system's first phase.
The initial phase of the AeroTrain will include nearly eight kilometers (five miles) of underground guideways, four stations, an offline maintenance facility and a fleet of 29 cars – each with a capacity of 70 to 90 passengers.
"Each car is designed to accommodate 90 passengers, but with luggage, that number may more realistically be about 70," Bennett noted.
The train cars will run in groups of four and will replace most of the airport's 49 independent "mobile lounges," which also each have a passenger capacity of 70 to 90 but run on diesel fuel and must yield to aircraft traffic on the tarmac.
"Gas mileage is not the greatest," Bennett said of the lounges, which have been in operation at Dulles since 1962.
Bennett said that since a separate international terminal would be "cost prohibitive" and unlikely in the near future, some mobile lounges will continue to serve international arrivals, who need to be processed through Customs before entering the main terminal. Currently, one in four of all airport arrivals, nearly 6 million people a year, are international passengers.
Other ongoing D2 construction projects include a fourth runway, scheduled to open in November; a new airport fire and rescue station; and the expansion of the International Arrivals building to twice its current size.
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