Orlando airport director Kevin Thibault said Wednesday that retrofitting Terminal C’s long concourse and international arrivals area for moving sidewalks will require innovative technology but is a near-term priority.
“You can’t put a pit in because it’s a concrete slab,” Thibault said of the challenge of installing moving sidewalks in the terminal, which opened late last year and has drawn praise for architecture but criticism for not taking into account younger, older and mobility challenged passengers and the distances they must walk.
“Industry has the ability for pitless moving sidewalks,” Thibault said. “One of the things we are looking to do, and actually real soon we are going to present to the board, is having an industry forum and calling in the industry to talk about the concepts that we think we want to look at and getting their feedback.”
Thibault said Charlotte’s airport dealt with similair complaints about long walks by retrofitting its terminals with moving sidewalks of the type being consider for Orlando’s airport.
“It’s state of the art, and all the manufacturers do it,” Thibault said.
He said the engagement with manufacturers and presentation to airport authority will play out “in the next couple of months,” leading to a potential proposal for a retrofit.
“I want to get industry feedback before I go out there and find that I’m proposing a unicorn that can never be provided,” Thibault said.
Moving sidewalks were part of early designs for Terminal C, a $3 billion addition about a mile south of the original A and B terminals, but were vetoed in 2017 as a part of a round of cost cutting.
During a public meeting of the authority that runs the airport, its chairman, Carson Good, did not address passenger criticisms of long walks at Terminal C and the absence of moving sidewalks.
When approached afterward, Good would not comment and suggested that questions be sent to him in an email that he might answer. He did not respond to an email.
With the rise of the pandemic and construction well underway, several big-ticket items at Terminal C were put on hold, including four gates at the south side of the new terminal. Federal funding and a surge in passengers has enabled the airport to restart those gates this year.
Thibault said a retrofit of moving sidewalks will be considered for both the long concourse serving JetBlue gates and for the international arrivals section that requires a series of walks up ramps to the immigrations checkpoint.
The longest walks within Terminals A and B are about a quarter-mile and about a half-mile in Terminal C.
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