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One airport people mover to close during expansion
Wednesday, September 22, 1999 By Joe Grata, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Some passengers and employees traveling between the airside and landside buildings at Pittsburgh International Airport will be asked to board a shuttle bus instead of the automated people movers next week.
One of the two people movers in the half-mile underground tunnel will be out of service next Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for the first phase of an expansion project that will replace two-car trains with three-car trains.
Since the remaining two-car train does not have the capacity to handle the crowds during peak hours, the county Aviation Department will operate shuttle buses.
"We're asking people to allow extra time" if they have flights to catch, said Hugh Hachmeister, principal architect for the department. "We're trying to make the inconvenience as minimal as possible."
Although one people mover can shuttle about 6,000 passengers an hour, it doesn't provide enough rush-hour capacity in view of increased passenger traffic at the airport. The people mover takes 100 seconds to make a one-way trip -- 70 seconds in motion and 30 seconds to load and unload.
As many as six buses will be used to move the overflow, operating on the tarmac between a commuter gate at the landside building and an airfield access door between the escalators next to the international arrivals area at the airside building.
Orange signs will mark shuttle bus departure points. Airport employees wearing orange shirts will provide assistance.
The airport is asking commuter airline passengers, airline employees and others who work in the airside terminal to use the buses, to leave room for others on the people mover.
Security will be beefed up, because people will be walking outside in airfield operations space normally off-limits to the public.
A shuttle bus system will also be needed in later phases of the $6.9 million people mover project.
West Mifflin-based Adtranz North America, a transit design and manufacturing firm, is supplying two new cars and renovating the four existing cars, which operate on an automated guideway.
When one of the two tracks in the tunnel is closed shortly after midnight Tuesday, workers will open a large ground-level hatch that provides access to the underground facilities. Cranes will remove the two cars, then replace them with two new cars, already delivered and sitting outside near the hatch opening.
The procedure will take three days, Hachmeister said, because Adtranz will have to make final adjustments on the new cars and test them before the public can ride.
The old cars will be trucked to Adtranz in West Mifflin shops to be renovated.
The current cars, which have racked up more than 600,000 miles since the county opened the midfield terminal in 1992, carry millions of passengers a year.
"This is one the most heavily utilized Adtranz people movers in the world," Hachmeister said. "The new cars and the rehabilitated cars will look the same but incorporate the newest technology. This will be very positive for people in the future, as far as providing better service."
When the midfield terminal was built, the people mover stations were designed with removable "knockout" walls, which will now be replaced with electronic sliding glass doors to accommodate three-car trains.
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