bamin

Hi, how is this going to work / help for international arrivals? I thought you had to take the ATS to T1-3 after Customs. Do you mean going thru TSA in T5 and then using the TTB is faster?

GUWonder

I mean TSA in T5 and then using the airside TTB to get out of T5.

Instead of having to go take the ATS to get airside following my international arrivals at ORD, when I already have a boarding pass for any departing ORD flight later on the day (and have no luggage to port over to self check-in at T1-T3), I look forward to sometimes just going directly to the TSA screening checkpoints at T5 to get airside there and then take the airside inter-terminal bus to get to T1-3.

Whether it’s faster, better or neither will depend on the particular circumstances of a trip/passenger. But sometimes it will be faster and/or better for me to do this than to do the land-side/ATS shuffle to go between terminals upon international arrival at ORD.

ords

I will expect this group to provide feedback.

There is one noticeable change, the busses will need to use the vehicle roadways whereas in 2019, the larger COBUS could be driven on/across taxiways. Some of the initial trial runs went from 4 to 18 minutes depending on the terminal. These are with new drivers, so I expect the higher times to come down as they become more familiar with the operation.

In 2019 Checkpoint 11 was used, given the location of M13 at T5 now, Checkpoint 10 will be the one passengers will be directed to unless TSA says otherwise.

GUWonder

Thanks for the appreciated info, as always.

Does ORD plan to actively encourage international arrival passengers to use the airside TTB to go from T5 to make the onward connections out of T1-T3?

Do you happen to know on average what percentage of international arrivals passengers at ORD are connecting onto a same-day onward flight out of ORD?

4-18 minutes? I am sure I’ll share my opinion about that. For me, it will largely comes down to the variance for any given pair of bus-embarkation and bus-disembarkation points. Predictability is important.

ords

fumje

Any day 1 riders?

Buster CT1K

I think it's great that the TTB is finally coming back and that it will be bidirectional.

aj411

Saw this today. Actually some promotion

ords

Signage at T5 is weak, so expect to see some improvements on this soon.

If you're coming from the main terminal complex over to T5 via the TTB, the CDA is aware there's a lack of connecting gate information monitors just outside the exit within the terminal. I'm expecting this to be updated within a few weeks. It's not like they knew months ago..

fumje

Since I don't see any reports here yet, I am popping in to say I found the bus service very easy to use and convenient. Total transfer time for me was about 15 minutes. It seems like it should worst case be 30 minutes or less. Great for looking at planes on the taxiway too.

ords

Had a chat the asst. port director with CBP and they're working to add in the express connect lane on the immigration queuing side. It's all dependant on the next phase of construction date. (personally, I see this around end of April, beginning of May)

Ridership is slowly moving upwards in numbers as CDA, airlines and TSA are once again becoming familiar and comfortable with it.

CLEguy

Nice TWA retrojet!

Qsuites111

Used the TTB to get from T3 to T5 a few days back. Fairly smooth sailing except the Prospectus staff weren’t there to open the secure door at T3 which resulted in an alarm and a 10 minute delay with airport security needed.

ords

Fun fact: since the TTB restart, around 12,000 passengers have used the service.

rdd619

I’m hoping to connect from T5 to T3 in a few weeks and it’s still not clear from official sites how the TTB would work for that direction.