One of three pick-up zones for domestic airline passengers who park their vehicles in BWI lots. Travelers who park off-site are limited to just one pick-up point, necessitating longer walks. (Photos/VoB staff)

AIRPORT SHAFTS TRAVELERS
WHO PARK AT OFF-SITE LOTS;
LONG WALK TO LONE PICK-UP

Passengers are treated unfairly
to boost BWI parking revenue
 
By David Maril
 
There’s a lot to like about BWI-Thurgood Marshall.

Compared to most other metropolitan- based airports, BWI is easily accessible from two cities, Baltimore and Washington.

It’s also not difficult to drive through the entire airport, connecting to all of the terminals.

If you don’t think BWI is extremely approachable by car, try driving to and flying out of Logan Airport in Boston. If the ordeal of passing through one of the long, traffic-snarled tunnels under Boston Harbor doesn’t faze you, try timing how long it takes to navigate the confusing, crowded exits and ramps that lead from one terminal to another.

And while Logan offers free shuttle service to travelers who need to get from one end of the sprawling airport to the other, BWI is structured so everything is much closer together.

For a discount option in getting to BWI, the Baltimore Light Rail offers cheap, although slow, service from Hunt Valley and Timonium, through Mount Washington and the city, to the airport.

While the car rentals have relocated off the airport grounds, shuttle service is frequent and the rental facility is large, modern and functional.

Thanks to Southwest Airlines, the popular king of discount flights, BWI keeps expanding and growing. Southwest, making Baltimore its hub of the northeast, has rapidly taken over the airport’s A and B terminals and is starting to spill into C.

In conjunction with Southwest’s expansion, the A terminal was remodeled a few years ago and is an impressive example of a modern, user-friendly facility that includes moving walkways and a wide variety of eating places and shops. The B terminal has also been upgraded and is superior to what passengers experience in most other airports.

While BWI has lost a lot of its international flights, there’s optimism this trend will be reversed as Southwest, finishing its takeover of AirTran, begins to offer flights out of the country.

Light Rail wends its way through downtown Baltimore en route to BWI. The train is a convenient and inexpensive alternative for airline travelers, who may have to walk long distances to board a shuttle to get to off-site parking lots.

There’s one major flaw at BWI, however, that gives the airport an extremely minor league and unfriendly image. Obviously driven by greed and a disregard for the public, BWI officials decided a few years back to make it much more difficult for travelers to park outside the airport at privately run shuttle lots.

Although the airport offers a selection of different price-level options for parking, many travelers prefer to use the parking lots outside the airport grounds. Many of these off-site parking companies offer Internet coupon discounts and membership perks that provide free-parking opportunities to frequent flyers.

To make it tougher on those who park outside of the airport, a policy was instituted to allow only one pick-up zone for all the off-site companies to meet travelers returning to Baltimore who need to be shuttled back to their cars.

The lone pick-up zone is at the center of the airport and a significant trek if you are flying into the A or B terminals.

While off-site companies, such as PreFlight Airport Parking, have to pick up their passengers at this one location, the airport’s shuttle buses to its own parking lots have three pick-up locations for domestic travelers. There’s one at the beginning of the airport drive, accessible for Southwest Airline flyers, one in the middle and one toward the end.

There’s no question that pick-up zones needed to be designated for parking-lot shuttle vans. Before the pick-up zones were created, passengers, running out into driving lanes, had to flag down the shuttle vans and often risked causing accidents by trying to board the vehicles in the middle of traffic. This was dangerous and detrimental to the traffic flow.

Shuttle buses line up at BWI’s only passenger loading site — located in the middle of the airport — for travelers who leave their vehicles at off-site parking facilities.

The current plan, however, to limit the several off-site parking companies to one pick-up station is unfair and absurd.

Southwest passengers, who give the airport the bulk of its business, are being especially discriminated against.

If you fly in on a Southwest flight that arrives at, let’s say, Gate A9, you’ve got a long hike, between getting out of the terminal, crossing to the second sidewalk, and then circling around almost half the airport to reach the pick-up location. Even if you are in great shape, it’s a slap in the face to be returning home at the end of a trip and have to take such a long trek to meet your parking shuttle-van.

What are you supposed to do if you have a lot of luggage, are elderly, handicapped or not in the best of health?

It’s amazing that BWI doesn’t apply this same rigid policy to arriving passengers heading out on trips. For whatever reason, the off-site parking vans are allowed to drop passengers off at the terminals they are flying out of.

It’s time fairness and common sense prevailed and a couple more pick-up zones be added for off-site parkers.

Airport officials should also realize that while they lose some revenue with travelers using other lots, it cuts down on traffic coming into the airport, which upgrades safety, improves conditions and helps overall business.

BWI is too good an airport to keep such a stupid, biased and shortsighted policy that is a disservice to people who prefer to use the off-site parking facilities.
 
davidmaril@voiceofbaltimore.org
 
“Inside Pitch” is a weekly opinion column written for Voice of Baltimore by David Maril.

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