Beckles

The new garage is 6,300 spaces (bigger than both current garages combined) and there will be a surface lot beyond the garage with 870 spaces (bigger than circle parking), no announcement yet on prices.

In theory bus service to the economy lots should improve with the new terminal because they will be able to pick up in only one spot and they will just use the biggest lot. The bus service can't get much worse.

They are supposedly going to turn the Terminal C parking garage into an additional parking option.

geo979

It would be nice if they had an air-train link to offsite parking and the rental car garage. Over the life of the new terminal wouldn't that be cheaper than labor intensive shuttle busses?

LegalTender

An Air-Train funded by a fee charged to rental car customers? They're already stiffed $15/day, including a Downtown Arena Fee, Customer Facility Charge and Transportation Facility Charge. All having unlimited duration.

They're nickel and dimed enough.

geo979

My question was more along the line of whether or not it would be self funded over the 40+ year lifetime of the airport. Eliminating daily drivers/busses for 40+ years would save a bundle of cash. You could compare the present value of 40+ years of savings to the initial cost of the air-train (plus ongoing air-train maintenance).

Peoriaman1

Do those kinds of things ever become self-funded? We (well, really our parents and grandparents) were told the same thing about the Illinois Tollway system 60 years ago yet we're still paying.

LegalTender

LGA support for a loop to the 7 train and LIRR has never come. SFO and EWR trains stop at BART and NJ Transit multi-modals, respectively. An air-train to Kansas City rental cars is self-evidently less warranted.

pinniped

Sidebar: I've always wondered why LGA doesn't have an easy public transit option to Manhattan. I'm aware of the long circuitous bus route, or walking to the train, or walking/running/biking all the way to Manhattan (there's apparently a website dedicated to that), but no easy Airtrain type connection straight out of the terminal.

I doubt a rental car train is ever in the cards in Kansas City. Seems less expensive to just expand the parking structure and move the rental cars on-terminal. Part of me wonders if we're past the all-time peak for rental car volume anyway. For business travel, I have shifted almost all of my activity from rentals to Uber/Lyft.

lougord99

Anecdotal: doesn't work for me. I'm working Springfield and Wichita from KC.

Antonio8069

Thanks for the advice on OKC's Bus 229. It ran conveniently from Terminal C. The issue with this service is it only operates hourly and took me one hour to reach 12th & Main - a distance of 22 miles.

Why is MCI so far away from the city? No one could tell me and this makes it hugely inconvenient. Thinking of equivalent size CA cities like Winnipeg & Regina, MCi is miles away from the city center (Apparently, they do have a city center airport which has no commercial flights ? Go figure!)

There are no other convenient transportation options - which is why Uber was recommended (I looked into it..............costs $47 - $50 one way, which is way out of my budget! The reason ? As far as I can see, everybody in Kansas City drives !

The bottom line - they have public transit and its a slog to make it work.

LegalTender

Many call Denver "hugely inconvenient." MCI is 6 miles closer to town than DIA and maybe 3 miles farther out than SEA, MSY and STL. Wheeler "city center" airport is impractical for several reasons. Regina and Winnipeg metros - together - are half KC's count.

Route 229 free bus is a long slog. One and done for sure.

pinniped

I didn't say (and don't believe) that rentals cars will go away. Just that their peak may have been in the 2010's. The bread and butter business travel use (renting and driving around one city) has to be decreasing, even if your type of travel (driving regionally) remains constant. I don't have any hard data, so who knows. The industry hasn't yet seemed to find its pre-covid equilibrium in terms of supply and demand, so it may be a few years before a trend can be analyzed without the overhang of supply chain problems, etc.

When MCI was built, the vision was that they'd need multiple very long runways to handle a future of supersonic travel. Original artist's depictions of MCI show Concorde/B2707 type aircraft sitting at every gate! They chose land far out in Platte County to allow for as much future expansion as they'd ever need. One of the runways is so long that it was considered a viable backup option for the Space Shuttle.

The downtown airport (MKC) has one runway which was expanded in recent years to handle Air Force One. Only time you see a larger jet sitting down there is when a sports team's charter is in town. It's still a busy private aviation field.

MCI to downtown is about 20-25 minutes. Farther away in miles, but closer in time-to-downtown than many airports.

fastflyer

MCI is a typical distance from the city center for a modern airport (which it soon will be -- lololol). 20 miles is far enough to keep the nabobs quiet. If you want to see the alternative, take a look at SAN (Diego) or PBI (Palm Beach), where airplane noises burden various neighborhoods all day. Airports with conveniently located oceans or wide rivers are an exception -- like PDX or JFK, where planes can take off (the loudest function of an airport) over water rather than people.

Regarding transportation (generally) in the US, you have two choices -- cheap, slow and public, or pricey, fast and private. Pick One.

pinniped

Sad thing is....Kansas City once had real, usable public transit. Multiple lines in different parts of the city, including a line connecting to the farm communities that are now all built in as Johnson County.

All of it torn up in favor of cars in the mid-20th century... You can still see the old tracks in some places.

Now the city is extending its one new streetcar line, in a few years it will connect UMKC to the River Market. Nice start, and it's nice in that it connects a bunch of entertainment districts, but it's not really a mass commuter thing and there are NO plans that I'm aware of to build transit to the airport. That won't happen in my lifetime, if ever.

jamiel

Not at all---easily possible!

Beckles

Easily possible? The lot being referred to is the Circle Lot, even before it was recently reduced in size it was literally hundreds of parking spaces at an airport with over 10,000 parking spaces available, and to get a space close to your terminal often requires a fair bit of luck.

Hard to imagine why the free transit option can't be more fast or frequent.