TERMINAL VELOCITY
Wellington Airport is going through a growth spurt and visitors will see the changes from next month. They include a new ramp to improve vehicle flows and a bigger area for dropping off passengers. Michael Forbes reports.
VISIT Wellington Airport late next month and you will notice plenty that is different about the place. Gone will be the need to do the much-maligned circuit of the car park to reach the main terminal.
Instead, visitors will be able to drive straight up a new ramp to the drop-off zone, which will be twice as big, with separate parking spaces for taxis and general traffic.
About 600 metres will be shaved off the journey for those who are interested in visiting the airport only to wave bon voyage to their loved ones.
The changes are part of a $5 million revamp of the main terminal entrance designed to unclog the traffic jams that can plague Wellington Airport when everyone in town is scurrying to catch a plane.
As chief commercial officer Matt Clarke explains, that scenario is all too frequent at present.
‘‘One of the best things about Wellington Airport is its proximity to town, but one of the potential downsides of that is people tend to leave it pretty late when they’re catching a flight. Members of Parliament tend to cut it pretty fine.’’
This is all well and good if you can breeze through town in 20 minutes and hop on a plane, but during peak times, many people find themselves stuck in a traffic jam that stretches all the way back to the roundabout at the top of Stewart Duff Drive.
In those situations, it is not uncommon to see people jumping out of cars and scampering across two lanes of traffic and the car park to avoid doing a loop of the terminal, Mr Clarke says.
‘‘That congestion was driving a lot of issues that contributed to people almost missing their flights, so we had to do something.
‘‘We looked at a few options. We could have bowled some buildings and tried to extend the [existing] car park, but that would have just pushed parking away from the terminal, which Wellingtonians probably wouldn’t appreciate, given our weather conditions.
‘‘The best option was to get people to the airport as directly as we could.’’
UNCLOGGING THE AIRPORT
By directing traffic straight to the terminal, the airport hopes it will solve its congestion issues.
‘‘In the peak time, we have up to 20,000 people coming through the airport and you really do have to manage things in a very coherent way when you get that level of traffic volume,’’ Mr Clarke says.
The problem is exacerbated by traffic from Moa Point, south of the airport.
About one-third of the traffic travelling past the terminal during
It is important to make sure all aspects of the airport are planned for, because Wellington Airport is one of the most constrained airports in the world in terms of the number of passengers we have per square metre. There’s nothing that’s not full of stuff.
Wellington Airport chief commercial officer Matt Clarke
peak times is actually taking a short cut along Stewart Duff Drive to or from Kilbirnie, he says.
The traffic jams can get so bad that motorists who have endured the painstaking journey to the top of the terminal find themselves leaving the airport to head straight back into the same congestion.
That makes things worse for the people coming from Moa Point, who find themselves stranded on Stewart Duff Drive because there are no opportunities to turn into the airport.
‘‘So they’re relying fully on a goodnatured driver to let them in.
‘‘But if that good-natured driver has already been held up for 10 minutes and he’s only got five minutes left to check in for his flight, then there’s not going to be a whole lot of good nature left in that driver.’’
In addition to the speedy new ramp, airport visitors will also soon notice new barrier arms at either end of Stewart Duff Drive – 19 of them to be precise, providing visitors with nine entrances and 10 exits to chose from.
But don’t let those numbers scare you. In general, people picking up or dropping off will have to pass through only two barrier arms.
‘‘It has been designed so there will always be more [gates] than required, even in peaks,’’ Mr Clarke says.
‘‘A lot of regular users, like buses and licensed taxis, will actually have radio-frequency IDs, so they just drive up and the barrier will raise automatically for them.’’
The new parking area will also increase the number of available parks from 1970 to 2200.
A GROWING AIRPORT
Given the pace at which the aviation industry flourishes, it is perhaps no surprise that Wellington Airport appears to be in a constant state of development.
Every five years the airport prepares a ‘‘master plan’’ to help it prepare for increases in passenger numbers. Its current plan looks forward to 2030, when about 10 million people are expected to pass through the airport’s gates annually – double the number who do now.
Already in the works is the development of a new control tower, a $40m expansion of its main terminal, and planning for a $300m extension of the runway.
The airport is not just focusing on the essentials. It is also developing a 200-seat restaurant/cafe and a 2000-square-metre extension to its 12-store retail park in Lyall Bay, while planning for a 100 to 150-room hotel.
Mr Clarke describes it as an exciting time. ‘‘It is important to make sure all aspects of the airport are planned for, because Wellington Airport is one of the most constrained airports in the world in terms of the number of passengers we have per square metre. There’s nothing that’s not full of stuff.’’
The main terminal expansion was especially needed, he says, because it was heading towards the sort of congestion problems that were already present in the drop-off zone.
‘‘The idea is to create more lounge space for domestic passengers. That will also allow us to rationalise where the aircraft fit around the airport.’’
The runway extension, too, while at least seven years from construction, has the potential to be a game-changer for the airport, allowing it to entice long-haul flights to and from Asia.
Establishing a direct Asian link has been predicted to bring an extra 35,000 overseas visitors into Wellington each year, injecting $44m into the economy and creating 372 new jobs.
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