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What the fuck is wrong with you, Austin?


crash_davis

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Yay! We can finally have a big boy airport, in 2029.

https://www.kut.org/transportation/2024-09-12/abia-aus-austin-bergstrom-international-airport-terminal-expansion-arrivals-departures-hall

Austin's airport set to move ahead with $865 million terminal expansion

A centerpiece of the largest-ever expansion of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport is on a glide path to obtain final approval for design and construction. City Council will vote on the project this month as ABIA strains to handle far more passengers than it was designed to accommodate.

If approved, the 370,500-square-foot extension of the Barbara Jordan Terminal — an area about the size of three Costco stores — will push the terminal north through the Red Garage and establish a new front door to Austin's airport.

The new structure, dubbed the "Arrivals and Departures Hall" (A/D Hall), will serve as the primary pickup and drop-off point for passengers. The building will house airline check-in counters, domestic baggage claim, and concessions like stores and cafes.

Construction on the $865 million project is expected to be mostly complete by December 2029, according to city solicitation documents.

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22 hours ago, crash_davis said:

Yay! We can finally have a big boy airport, in 2029.

https://www.kut.org/transportation/2024-09-12/abia-aus-austin-bergstrom-international-airport-terminal-expansion-arrivals-departures-hall

Austin's airport set to move ahead with $865 million terminal expansion

A centerpiece of the largest-ever expansion of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport is on a glide path to obtain final approval for design and construction. City Council will vote on the project this month as ABIA strains to handle far more passengers than it was designed to accommodate.

If approved, the 370,500-square-foot extension of the Barbara Jordan Terminal — an area about the size of three Costco stores — will push the terminal north through the Red Garage and establish a new front door to Austin's airport.

The new structure, dubbed the "Arrivals and Departures Hall" (A/D Hall), will serve as the primary pickup and drop-off point for passengers. The building will house airline check-in counters, domestic baggage claim, and concessions like stores and cafes.

Construction on the $865 million project is expected to be mostly complete by December 2029, according to city solicitation documents.

I'm sure that's going to be fun to experience.  Each time I see Houston's expansion shenanigans, I think, "thank God I'm in Austin".  

Austin: Hold my $15 cocktail

Edited by texasdago
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2 minutes ago, texasdago said:

I'm sure that's going to be fun to experience.  Each time I see Houston's expansion shenanigans, I think, "thank God I'm in Austin".  

Austin: Hold my $15 cocktail

Agreed. IAH construction is a giant shitshow. I imagine AUS will fuck it up even worse. But can't move ahead without some pain. I'm ready for the pain to get to the cure.

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The train was always nothing more than a graft project.  The airport, though, is in desperate need of expansion and a complete rethinking of how they move people in and out of there.   I can't think of another North American airport that is a bigger pain in the ass to pick someone up at, and the city allows for more flights in and out of there than they should.  I don't fully understand how the FAA has allowed it.  

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Just now, Samson's Wig said:

The train was always nothing more than a graft project.  The airport, though, is in desperate need of expansion and a complete rethinking of how they move people in and out of there.   I can't think of another North American airport that is a bigger pain in the ass to pick someone up at, and the city allows for more flights in and out of there than they should.  I don't fully understand how the FAA has allowed it.  

So, I guess I never have to pick someone up so I haven't had to deal with that but after years of flying out of IAH, AUS is so much easier.  I kind of like it.  Perspectives, I guess.

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53 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

Agreed. IAH construction is a giant shitshow. I imagine AUS will fuck it up even worse. But can't move ahead without some pain. I'm ready for the pain to get to the cure.

As a person that is married to someone who travels weekly for work, don’t get me started on IAH construction. That said at least IAH has multiple points of ingress/egress that helps a bit. Also, IAH sped up used COVID to accelerate construction while Austin put all their plans on hold. Four years later, air travel has grown at one of the fastest rates in the country and they still haven’t turned a shovel on expansion. The current west gate expansion is only to replace the gate capacity that will be taken offline to dig the tunnel to the new concourse. 

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1 minute ago, InkaUtexas said:

Would make Nicole more effective and we all know Tarrytown is tired of the police presence looking for bodies.

True.  And would be a lot easier on her schedule if she could drown someone in time to make it to the airport for her 2:30 flight to strangle someone in Seattle.  

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55 minutes ago, PvilleStang said:

My only question is why not make concourse B symmetrical?  Seems like you could get another 15 gates in there...

image.thumb.png.c1dd9d36b720ff1634fe3936ebd8125f.png

That’s the longer range plan. Of course that means it won’t be initiated until the airport is already over capacity again.

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49 minutes ago, royiv said:

That’s the longer range plan. Of course that means it won’t be initiated until the airport is already over capacity again.

The stupidity of it is that it would be significantly cheaper to just include it in this project with no real change to the schedule.  Of course, we can't do anything that actually makes sense.

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1 hour ago, Armybrat said:

Plus Speed bumps and roundabouts on the runways & taxiways

Dedicated curbside pedi-cab lane.

1 hour ago, CooterBrown said:

The stupidity of it is that it would be significantly cheaper to just include it in this project with no real change to the schedule.  Of course, we can't do anything that actually makes sense.

Why just one grift when you can have two?

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3 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Anybody want to tell him?

No one else wants to tell me, so I guess we're all in the dark.   What did I miss?  If we rejected a public improvement bond related to the airport (or anything else) in the last fifteen years or so, I was definitely in a coma that week.  While that's certainly possible, it would be highly out of character for the voters in Austin, which was my point.  I thought the vast majority of the funding for most of the current improvements is coming from state and federal grants, so I don't understand your blaming voters for any of it outside of your tendency to carry water for city leadership no matter the topic.  I'm sure you have your personal reasons for doing so, but how anyone can think this city has been well-managed over the decades is mind-bottling. 

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Mueller (the airport) opened in 1930.  My first day in town in 1983 the headline was "Austin to build new airport".  In Manor.  Didn't happen.
Sixteen years and one giant gift of a blank slate Air Force base later, ABIA opened in 1999.

Who thought that Austin might grow?  Why plan for expansion?  What is the point of that?

DFW and ATL got it right the first time. ATL has a direct connection to Marta and signs directing people to Uber/Lyft.  DFW has DART but it took a while.

Austin says "shhhhhhh, if you are a horrible person who really needs unsafe non-fingerprinted ride-share, it is a half mile out in the garage but don't tell anyone."

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1 hour ago, Samson's Wig said:

No one else wants to tell me, so I guess we're all in the dark.   What did I miss? 

well you evidently missed the 2000 transportation bond, the 2013 school bond, the 2014 transportation bonds, etc et al. 
And then there’s the shit they don’t even put in front of you because you’re all too goddamn cheap and would reject it, and then there’s the shit they don’t even bring you because of the mediocrities you elect to office and the mouth breathers and hangers on they appoint, and then there’s the shit you would never vote for because most of you act like this is a fucking backwater rather than a world-class city and I think it’s because you that’s what you want.

Dallas and Houston don’t have these problems because they’re too busy moaning how great it was in 1975. 
 

And that’s the irony. People who don’t know anything thinks we don’t plan, that’s not true. We build great plans. We just don’t execute them. You don’t want to meet the future, we want a Time Machine back to the day before you got here.

no offense though. 😉

 

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
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1 hour ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

well you evidently missed the 2000 transportation bond, the 2013 school bond, the 2014 transportation bonds, etc et al. 
And then there’s the shit they don’t even put in front of you because you’re all too goddamn cheap and would reject it, and then there’s the shit they don’t even bring you because of the mediocrities you elect to office and the mouth breathers and hangers on they appoint, and then there’s the shit you would never vote for because most of you act like this is a fucking backwater rather than a world-class city and I think it’s because you that’s what you want.

Dallas and Houston don’t have these problems because they’re too busy moaning how great it was in 1975. 
 

And that’s the irony. People who don’t know anything thinks we don’t plan, that’s not true. We build great plans. We just don’t execute them. You don’t want to meet the future, we want a Time Machine back to the day before you got here.

no offense though. 😉

 

By all accounts, Project Connect has been a runaway success for the world-class city of Austin.

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