Council OKs $3M to help with congestion

City Council CLEVELAND — voted 13-4 Monday to allow Cleveland Hopkins International Airport to spend up to $3 million for customer-friendly improvements to the area that will be used by shuttles and limos and taxis.

The improvements will expand the Ground Transportation Center to allow more commercial vehicles to use it to pick up and drop off passengers. Canopies will be constructed to allow the vehicles to be under cover and provide travelers shelter from the weather.

Ultimately it will help the airport reduce traffic that at times congests the main terminal roadways so much that cars are backed up onto Ohio 237 outside of the airport’s main entrance.

“The roadway system is absolutely jammed with traffic now,” Fred Szabo, the interim director at Hopkins, said during a meeting of council’s Finance Committee. “The existing system is what it is. We’re not going to be able to make that any larger.”

But the legislation was not without critics. Council members Dona Brady and Martin Keane each voiced objections at the committee meeting and voted against passage. They were joined by Councilmen Mike Polensek and Brian Kazy.

What’s driving the improvements?

Traffic on the roadways has grown more and more congested as the number of passengers flying in and out of Hopkins has increased.

Passenger traffic dipped as low as 7.6 million a year in 2014, the first full year after United pulled the plug on hub operations at Hopkins. But air traffic has rebounded, topping 9.1 million passengers in 2017.

The airport is on pace to top that this year, having drawn 6.8 million through August. Robert Kennedy, Cleveland’s director of port control, expects more than 10 million travelers will use the airport in 2019.

What will work entail?

Expanding the Ground Transportation Center will allow the airport to shift much of its commercial traffic off the upper and lower roadways in front of the terminal.

Kennedy estimated that move will shift 300,000 vehicles a year off the terminal roadways, easing congestion and wear and tear on the pavement.

The Ground Transportation Center is in an octagonal building between the terminal and the airport’s large parking garage. It connects to the terminal via a tunnel that runs under the lower roadway and an overhead walkway that passes above the upper deck.

The airport intends to route taxi, limousine and ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft to the south end of the terminal to drop off passengers via an alternate route.

Those services would pick up passengers at the transportation center. In the case of taxi cabs, they would make pickups just inside the adjacent garage.

Shuttles already are using the transportation center for picking up and dropping off passengers.

Design work is expected to begin quickly, once the airport selects a builder. The project won’t be finished, though, until late 2019, according to the airport.