I have been to not many but few airports and each one seems to be upping ante with complexity. Its really hard to go around with cars or even juat navigating around airports. Why are they built like that? Is it just output of making it simple inside??
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An airport will have one, usually two freeways that connect to it – each with at least one on and offramp. There is usually also a surface road nearby for freight companies and other services associated with the airport.
Then, within the airport, there are separate areas for arrivals and departures, as well as short term parking, long term parking, and an area for rental cars. The terminal also needs a loop so that people don’t need to get onto the freeway if they were picking someone up who wasn’t at curbside yet.
All of these places need to connect to each other, and so there need to be lots of lanes and ramps for that, which makes airports complex.
There are logistical challenges for getting thousands of people an hour into and out of a space. Considering the vastly different requirements of the transport devices. big awkward aircraft, all the servicemobiles. getting people to the airport, buses, autos, trains, parking. plus you have to plan for the flow of people waiting for security clearance, waiting for their plan, waiting for the luggage.
Now consider that most of the facilities started with a train station tradition, a LONG warehouse/freight station like building with aircraft parking outside, car parking lot on the other side.
legacy buildings probably cause the most problems with designing for the next level of passenger numbers, the jets have grown from a couple dozen passengers to several hundred, the craft themselves increased from charter boat to mega yacht size.
We didn’t even think of security till the 70s, and then upscaled that after 9/11…so now you have to have shops and restaurants built in a whole new area. its like instead of one freighthouse like building where passengers can get tickets and then wander to their gate, now they need to move from that entrance, to the security check area and then to the waiting area, that’s like two and half buildings
It’s like large hospitals.
Usually if you try to get around large hospitals, you have to navigate a maze of hallways. There’s no direct route anywhere. And it sure seems to be designed poorly!
That’s because large hospitals usually start out as small hospitals. Then they add a new wing. And then four years later, they add another wing. Then three years later, they add another building, and connect it with a hallway.
So hospitals kind of “Grow” over time, spreading out like an amoeba. Nobody thought out the entire thing 30 years into the future, it just kind of grew that way.
I think the same is true for airports. They start out small: one runway, one terminal, a few gates. Then the metro area grows, and they need more airport capacity, so they add more terminals, more runways. Repeat this process every five or ten years.
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