Rapid passenger growth is driving big projects at Denver International Airport, from a $650 million of the iconic tented terminal building to $1.5 billion in on all three concourses.
But those gains in capacity won’t mean much if the airport’s nearly 23-year-old automated train system can’t get passengers to the gates in time to catch their flights.
DIA officials recently outlined plans both to expand the system’s capacity, with a net addition of 10 train cars coming in 2020, and to boost its reliability. Both are seen as vital asDIA forecasts an increase in passenger traffic from more than 60 million this year to 80 million by 2030.
The Denver City Council is expected to approve a part of these plans Monday night.
The importance of the train’s reliability, when a sensor glitch twice resulted in train delays as pre-Thanksgiving travelers flooded the airport.
The airport’s design makes the train the linchpin of the whole thing. A bridge crosses from the terminal building to Concourse A, giving travelers headed there a second option, but the train system is the only way to get to B and C.
Airport officials say mishaps are rare, and they should become rarer under new standards and incentives contained in a proposed $162 million operations and maintenance contract that covers the next seven years, through 2024.
Thecouncil is set to approve the no-bid performance contract with the system’s original manufacturer, Bombardier Transportation Holdings USA, on Monday.
The Pittsburgh-based Bombardier unit and its predecessor companies, which date back to the original contractor, AEG Westinghouse, have been deemed the only service provider qualified to run the DIA subway because it uses proprietary systems and software, as do many other airport transit systems.
Bombardier’s current seven-year contract expires at the end of the year and was worth as much as $121.5 million, DIA says.
The 33 percent increase for the next contract allows Bombardier to add 15 people to its local staff, mostly for maintenance-related jobs. It also will ramp up the maintenance program.
“The new contract places an increased focus on maintenance and operations of the system, recognizing that the system is aging,” DIA spokesman Heath Montgomery said. “This maintenance includes not only the cars, but also the tracks, tunnels and power distribution systems.”
The Automated Guideway Transit System has formed the transportation spine of DIA since the airport opened in February 1995. It originally cost $84 million, according to news reports at the time; that amounts to nearly $138 million in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Since then, there have been rare-but-notable system glitches and failures.
Last year, four people were checked out at hospitals after and then slow down abruptly. Other failures have caused shutdowns, necessitating the use of backup shuttles on the tarmac.
https://twitter.com/checkmyprivileg/status/933354238809214977?refsrc=email&s=11
But DIA hasn’t needed backup shuttles at all in 2016 or so far this year, Montgomery said. Overall, DIA performance metrics show the system has been reliable, working properly at least 99.9 percent of the time each year since 2010.
Bombardier says it maintains more than 9,000 rail vehicles worldwide. Among U.S. airports, the company oversees transit systems at Newark, Orlando, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston and Phoenix, according to a DIA presentation to the council.
DIA’s plans include buying 26 new train cars
The airport’s latest plans call for adding 26 train cars to the system, which covers the 2.5 mile roundtrip between the JeppesenTerminal and Concourse C. Some of those new cars will replace 16 that date to the airport’s opening.
That will mean a net increase of 10 cars to the current 31-car fleet.
“We recognize that this is absolutely critical to our ability to operate our facilities,” said Ken Greene, DIA’s chief operating officer, during a council committee presentation earlier this month.
Airport officials plan to initiate the design and construction of those cars in the spring, resulting in a still-unpriced purchasing contract that’s separate from Bombardier’s new operations deal, Montgomery said. DIA estimates the cars will be delivered in batches throughout 2020.
Those 41 cars will give more flexibility to a system that currently runs six four-car trains at a time by default, with about two minutes between trains at each platform. At peak traffic times, DIA runs seven trains, shortening the wait to 108 seconds.
The initial plan in 2020 calls for adding an eighth four-car train during peak periods as those lengthen with increased passenger traffic. That would mean the arrival of a train every 95 seconds or so.
But the platforms also can accommodate up to six cars per train, Montgomery said. That gives DIA more options to expand capacity as demand dictates.
And that demand is coming sooner rather than later, DIA officials have said. Passenger growth projections are the impetus behind , which includes the renovation as part of a 34-year deal, and for , which will add a total of 39 gates by 2021.
The expansion of the train car fleet “gives us the ability to meet the demand of the expansion of those 39 gates,” Mark Nagel, DIA’s senior director of airport operations, assured the council committee.