Sky Train to make its debut

After months of tests, the $1.58 bil automated system at Sky Harbor will open on Monday

On paper, the PHX Sky Train is simple: a few extra lines and dashes near the center of metropolitan Phoenix’s alreadycrowded map.

In reality, some say, the Sky Train symbolizes much more — a major city’s coming-of-age, the final piece of the puzzle that fully integrates the Valley’s still-nascent light-rail system with one of the busiest airports in the country.

The $1.58 billion automated, interterminal train system opens at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on Mon- day. Once operating, the driverless train will connect airport passengers for free between Terminal 4, the East Economy parking lot and the Metro lightrail station at 44th and Washington streets.

Trains will arrive and depart

every three to four minutes and operate non-stop, 365 days a year.

The Sky Train’s new stations at 44th Street and the East Economy lot are imposing, gleaming silver structures, adorned with $5.6 million in public art and energy-efficient features.

However, the technology of the train itself is nothing new, said Bill Sproule, a professor of civil engineering at Michigan Technological University who has studied airport planning and design for about 40 years.

“Airport people movers have been around since the early ’70s,” he said, rattling off a list of the earliest adopters: Tampa, Seattle, Dallas-Fort Worth.

The Sky Train will be little different. The automated trains are electrically powered, operating on a center-rail line, much like dozens of people movers at airports across the country.

On board, there is the predictable, anonymous, soothing female voice that announces the train’s next destinations. It symbolizes convenience for the airport passenger, Sproule said. It will be reliable, if not flashy.

“It’s pretty dependable, just like an elevator,” Sproule said. “We’ve gotten over the idea that you’ve got to have an operator on board, and I think the safety elements are almost foolproof with all of the redundant systems that are there.”

Aviation experts say that those involved in the Sky Train project have been major players. Bombardier, a Canadian manufacturer that built the Sky Train, is the largest transit equipment automated peoplemover company in the world. The city hired engineering firm Gannett Fleming and Hensel Phelps Construction to design and build the other components of the system.

“All the folks you’re talking about are people I would pick if I were doing this,” said Bill Fife, a retired 46-year airport executive who has conducted more than 150 airport peer reviews and who headed the AirTrain project for John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

“It’s simple, in a way: If someone screws up in the aviation business, they don’t get any more work,” Fife said. “You don’t hire the screwups.”

Fife does, however, have a long list of things airport officials should do when opening a people-mover system.

The automated systems, the signals, the moving walkways, every last component of the train and the pieces that connect to it must be working well, he said.

And airports often forget to sweat the small stuff, which is a mistake, Fife added.

“I saw one airport, the signing was terrible,” Fife said. “They didn’t think through their whole analysis, and the end result was that they had duty supervisors acting as folks to direct people because people were going in the wrong direction. You need to make sure you’re out there early and often to test it out with people who aren’t familiar with the system so they don’t get lost.”

“People have to figure out the worst-case consideration, not the best-case consideration,” he said.

Sky Harbor officials didn’t take chances, even as delays to the system’s opening raised questions about the project.

“We would have loved to have it for spring training,” Phoenix aviation director Danny Murphy told airport aviation-board members in February, when an opening date for the project remained uncertain, pending a long punch list of unfinished tests.

Nevertheless — even at the expense of missing one of the Valley’s biggest tourism draws — Murphy emphasized that it was more important to scrutinize “every last detail” because, once running, the Sky Train would operate 24 hours a day, leaving little chance for repairs without interrupting the entire system.

“We want to make sure everything is absolutely perfect about the train,” Murphy said.