How to fix the airport's holiday traffic problem
New drop-off points? A pop-up holiday shuttle? Relocate taxis and Ubers? Let's brainstorm together.
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Charlotte’s airport won’t discuss its Thanksgiving traffic meltdown. We have suggestions.
On a couple peak days around Thanksgiving, the line of cars at the airport stretched to Wilkinson Boulevard, delaying passengers from reaching the terminal.
by Steve Harrison
WFAE
The days before and after Thanksgiving are the busiest travel days of the year. Of course the airport will be busy.
But the traffic delays at Charlotte Douglas were extreme this year, with reports that it took some people an hour to drive the one mile from Wilkinson Boulevard to the terminal. There were photos on social media of people walking toward the terminal, dragging their suitcases past the gridlock. That was in addition to other backups on Wilkinson and Billy Graham Parkway.
The bottleneck comes after CLT has nearly finished a $600 million terminal expansion, which includes more lanes for vehicles at the departure and arrival levels. (Some lanes on the departure level were closed as construction continues on a new canopy covering the road.)
Is this just the new normal for holidays? And with air travel increasing, will these delays begin seeping into other peak times as well?
CLT declined to speak with Transit Time about the traffic meltdown.
“We will be conducting a full internal debriefing to review the Thanksgiving holiday and prepare for the Christmas travel season,” the airport said in an emailed statement. “We are open to speaking with you after that debrief takes place.”
The airport has offered no explanation for the traffic delays, other than to say that the week around Thanksgiving is a busy travel period and that passengers should arrive early to the airport.
In this issue of Transit Time, we will brainstorm ways to get people in and out of CLT faster. We will look at transit options along with the need for a second arrivals and departures area.
A problem with CLT is the airport’s horseshoe-shaped road design. Cars are funneled into a 1,000-foot arrivals and departures area. They must make two 90-degree turns, which slows traffic, as well as weave in and out of traffic to dart to the curb. Almost 40,000 local travelers passed through CLT the Sunday after Thanksgiving, resulting in a lot of cars attempting to squeeze into a small space.
Is there a way to disperse that traffic? If you don’t want every vehicle converging in one congested spot, the obvious solution is to spread the traffic out over more of the available real estate.
Let’s look at some options. Some can be done now. Others would take years.
Short-term solutions
◼️ Move the taxis and ride-share companies.
Taxis, along with Uber and Lyft, pick up passengers on the arrivals level.
What if the airport built a new loop road just north of the hourly parking deck and moved them there? It’s now a surface parking lot by the old control tower.
Here is what that would look like: (Please excuse Transit Time’s crude drawing)
Or, what if CLT followed the lead of other airports and moved ride-hailing services and taxis to their own level on the hourly parking deck across from the terminal? That would still be accessible by foot, via the tunnels from the terminal to the hourly deck, and would take a big chunk of waiting passengers and cars out of the main circulation.
◼️ A lane just for buses?
The Charlotte Area Transit System today offers the Sprinter, a bus running between uptown and the airport terminal. Its schedule says it runs about every 30 minutes. But that bus doesn’t have its own bus lane, so it’s stuck in the same holiday traffic as everyone else.
The airport could convert a general-purpose lane into one for buses, including parking shuttle buses — though that might make car traffic even worse.
Charlotte Douglas could look to solve this problem by building a new bus-only lane that perhaps drops passengers off at the proposed taxi/ride-share loop.
◼️ Peak travel period shuttles
What if the airport built temporary drop-off parking lots off Wilkinson Boulevard and Billy Graham Parkway that would be used only during peak periods? People could get dropped off there — there would be no parking spaces — and then catch airport shuttle buses and CATS buses to the terminal.
The buses could operate in their own dedicated lanes, allowing them to make the trip from the remote drop-off area to the terminal in five minutes or so.
Long-term fixes
◼️ Create a new entrance near the new A gates
Although there are now gates nearly a half-mile from the main terminal, CLT still requires all passengers to be dropped off and picked up in the same place. And Charlotte Douglas has an addition to the A Concourse under construction, known as the Concourse A Expansion—Phase II. It is adding 10 gates, mostly for Delta Air Lines, and is expected to open next fall.
With that portion of the airport expanding, what if the airport built a second entrance that’s just north of the daily decks, near the new A Concourse gates under construction? Here’s where it could go:
The security lanes could be on the east side of the main road. After clearing security, passengers could walk across a bridge to reach the A gates.
The new entrance would be labeled for passengers flying on airlines like Frontier, Southwest, United and Delta that use the A gates today. Having multiple passenger entrances is common at large airports.
One challenge would be creating the new road to reach the new entrance — and not creating new traffic jams as those lanes merge onto the existing lanes.
◼️ Bring the proposed light-rail station closer
CATS plans to build an airport station for the proposed Silver Line light rail on Wilkinson Boulevard — but not near the terminal. In 2021, Transit Time took an extensive look at why the city’s reasoning didn’t make sense.
If Transit Time were designing the airport, we would build the Silver Line airport station adjacent to our new airport entrance near the A gates.
That would make it easy for the train to continue to the west toward Belmont. It would also give rail passengers an easy transfer from the station to the terminal.
Here is what that would look like:
Even if the Silver Line is built, this likely won’t be a short-term fix: Under the most optimistic timeline, the light rail line isn’t expected to be complete until around 2040.
Some of these solutions might be feasible, while others could take decades, cost millions or perhaps be totally impractical.
We’re not traffic engineers. But we do know that waiting in an hour of traffic to reach the terminal every time the airport has a surge of activity won’t be sustainable going forward.
Steve Harrison is a reporter with WFAE, Charlotte’s NPR news source. Reach him at sharrison@wfae.com.
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What are your suggestions?
➡️ What ideas do you have for improving airport traffic? Share them in the comments (or email us at editor@cltledger.com).
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My husband and I were part of the many thanksgiving travelers who waited hours for a pickup. My sons were in line for over 1.45 hours trying to reach us. The biggest issue we noticed is the poor training of the crossing guards. ALL foot traffic was being allowed to pass at will at the first section of pickups (stationA). So cars were being stopped every five minutes to let walkers pass...which led to areas B,C,D,and E waiting. If walkers were parsed every ten minutes....at the end of the terminal, this would allow more cars to enter the pick up zone and load their passengers. An hour could have been shaved off had my husband been allowed to direct traffic! I'm sure the guards were just following orders, but there was no reasoning behind the process.
There are two major stories impacting Charlotte that are not being covered enough on the true impact for the future of Charlotte that the Charlotte Ledger has a real opportunity to shine on these topics. One is the incredible opportunity with the new medical school being built and the second is the absolute failure in planning for the multi-billion dollar airport expansion. I have an outline of an article already written as I used to travel 40+ times a year and am so thankful I rarely travel as our airport has become a real problem, with no fix in sight, and more traffic coming every year. Feel free to reach out if you want to discuss or collaborate on an article on the airport, from a travelers perspective, not the city or airport or airlines.