AIRPORT ACCESS: CASE STUDY IN INTERMODALISM

This conference resource paper discusses airport access as a case study, a microcosm of intermodal planning issues. The structure of the discussion is first concept, then practice, and finally vision. The paper concludes with the story of Grace Hughes. Grace and her family are entrepreneurs who own the Marin Airporter bus service. They built, with private funds, a bus terminal to serve people going to San Francisco International airport. Representatives of two airlines approached them with a proposal to sell their tickets at the bus terminal. The response was, "No, you are not welcome in my terminal unless you check people in, take their baggage, and give them a boarding pass right there." The airlines' response was, "We do not do that stuff. Our job starts at the airport. You are in the bus business, not us." The airline representatives were afraid that the baggage would get lost in the hold of the bus. Grace thought about it for a little while, and she came up with a brilliant, "high-tech" scheme. She won. They started to check baggage at Grace's facility. Her solution for this intermodal problem was as simple as a dog leash--one per set of baggage going to each airline. When the bus arrived at the airport, the bus driver unloaded the appropriate bundle of baggage. In several years of operation, they have never lost a single bag.