The Big BOS Rental Car Shift this morning
 

At 12:01 am, all the "on airport" rental car companies shifted to the brand new consolidated multi-story indoor facility -- the m.o. of BWI, SFO (but not SFO's "Tunerville Trolley"), LAS and several others, for example.

Cool! I saw in an article somewhere that it's on the southern side of the airport complex - does that mean it's down on Harborside Drive somewhere?

Yup, but I'm not exactly sure where it's entered. Anyway, it's to be fed by airport buses instead of each company's from now on. That will be nice for all the convenience as well as responsible reasons. Will be interesting to hear from the first here to experience it. I will be sad not to be able to walk between the Airport Blue Line "T" station and the Dollar, Avis and Hertz lots, however. But obviously it's a grand improvement. BOS has come a long long way, thanks to all our fees.

I'm actually quite nervous about this change. At every airport that has switched to a consolidated rental car lot, I have found the airport-provided transportation to be far inferior to the company-provided transportation.

A recent article in the Boston Globe (which I can't find now) said that buses will now have two routes, one on the departures level to drop off passengers and one on the arrivals level to take people to the car rental facility.

In my experience, the discount rental companies are often poor, especially at night, while the first tier, such as Avis and Hertz, have bus after bus after bus before National/Alamo and Dollar come around. IME, Dollar is clearly the worst, and all this is most obvious at LAX.

Nice. I wonder if, at some point, they'll have buses that just go to A and B, and ones that just go to C and E, as is the case with the buses to the Blue Line "T" station during the day. But I suppose the OR has been tested at other airports by now.

And it seems to me that a 15 minute interval with the new system is an awfully long time. I'll bet the buses will be packed if each bus goes to all terminals, until they get it all figured out. If so, it shouldn't take long.

Came through last night.. Bus I was on was a disaster. Reminded me of the Local buses in Shenzhen China. Wall to wall people, packed in like sardines. I got on at Terminal A, so not sure of where the route started to be so full so fast. They need to either have more buses, or dedicate a bus per terminal IMHO. They are still working out the kinks inside too- first try at Budget I was assigned a car in the Avis area- F12.. no car in that space. Had to go back and start over, but everyone I talked to was courteous and helpful. Think it could be good once the jammed buses are addressed and the kinks at the consolidated facility are worked out.

I went through this past weekend on Friday and Sunday and the buses, as far as I could tell, were the sames ones that fed the T station with separate C/E & A/B buses

It looked like seven minute intervals to me.

Unlike sgw2124's experience, I found it all to be very nice. The buses weren't super packed on a Friday morning, although it was certainly full. On the way back to the terminals from the rental car facility, they had a bunch of people there directing passengers. That bus was even emptier than on Friday morning.

Didn't come across any kinks inside the rental car facility. I liked it better than PHX's, which is my only other experience with a dedicated rental car facility.

Right. Per the OP on the Avis board, it's the old...

#22: A, B, and the T
#33: C, E, and the T
#55: A, B, C, E, and the T (off-peak hours)

...Which is a variation from the plan that I remember at other airports with consolidated rental car facilities. Wonder if it's an experiment, and if it will hold.

Somewhat off-topic, has anyone heard what will go into the old lots?

This is a big step in the right direction for BOS. I wonder if there's a plan to install a terminal-rentacar-subway people mover thing, much like at EWR and SFO. Consolidated rental car facility is a great concept as long as it's not too far (like at LAS) and the shuttle comes often.


I think 7-min interval is too spread apart. In the past, Hertz alone seemed to come around that often at BOS.

I vote for not - not that anyone cares :D. SFO's, anyway, deservedly has the nickname "Tunerville Trolley," thanks to its slowness. But I wouldn't be surprised if it's somewhere in the planning debate mix at BOS. They could save a ton of money in labor costs. And those PFCs keep flowing in.

Will have to look the next few times to see if it's physically possible on our brave new airport.

I experienced the new shuttle routes for the first time yesterday. Terminal B to the Blue Line in the morning and the reverse in the late afternoon. The morning trip obviously was fine as the Blue Line was the first stop after I boarded at B. But I almost missed my flight on the way back, as the rental car stop after the T station added a good 15 minutes to the trip. There were multiple buses backed up at the rental car center.

I hope they have a plan to have dedicated routes to serve just the rental car center, because the current routes are bad both for T passengers and car renters.