Teardown of Terminal B, built in 1952, will be completed by the end of the year.
The walls of Bradley Airport’s Terminal B have begun to come down, and the Connecticut Airport Authority is setting its sights on building a new transportation center in the old terminal’s place.
Teardown of the building -- which stood for 63 years -- is planned to be done by the end of the year.
With building construction slated for 2017, the project will consolidate the airport’s car rental services. The way it works now, customers have to take a bus between the airport and rental companies. Airport roads will be re-aligned to make way for the new facility.
The project is estimated to cost up to $250 million, and will be funded by a “facility charge” for car renters.
While the majority of the space from Terminal B will be saved for the construction of a new terminal around 2025, Kevin Dillon, Executive Director of the Connecticut Airport Authority, said the project’s third component — a public transit center — will have a more regional impact.
“One of the things that we would like to do as the new airport authority is enhance regional bus service, to enhance that mode of ground access to the airport,” Dillon said.
Dillon said the state’s work on the Hartford rail line from New Haven to Springfield has the airport authority looking at running a high-frequency bus service between the new transit center and the Windsor Locks Amtrak station.
A longer-term goal is to connect the Windsor Locks train station to the airport by light rail. Dillon said the authority is now working with the towns surrounding the airport to identify a corridor of land that will be preserved for this future project.
Dillon said as the airport looks to venture into international markets, they hope to attract foreign travelers with a more robust public transportation system.
Today, public transit options to the airport are limited.
The Bradley Flyer, an hourly bus service operated by CT Transit that runs from downtown Hartford to the airport, is the main public transportation option to get to the airport. It costs $1.50 per ride.
The bus route launched in the 1990s to accommodate airport workers — not airline commuters. CT Transit said that about 500 daily riders use the route. Most of them use it to get to work, either at the airport, surrounding hotels, or retail and restaurants on the way.
CT Transit assistant planning and marketing manager Phillip Fry said that getting more air travelers to use the bus route is simply a matter of getting the word out. Their initial plan is to improve signage along the route.
“If you’re a traveler and you want to save some money, it’s a dollar-and-a-half, a 30-minute ride to the airport,” Fry said. “Or, you can spend towards $50.00 to have someone drive you to the airport.”
Dillon said the airport authority will help the DOT promote the Flyer to airport customers.
“We think it’s very important, as we want to continue to promote Bradley and Hartford as a meeting destination location, that we have that very viable connectivity back and forth between the airport and downtown Hartford,” Dillon said.
Dillon said the airport authority is considering using its reach to offer public transit options from other parts of the state. One option would be to offer free parking at the Groton-New London airport, and then give bus passengers a free or reduced rate to Bradley.
Driving to the airport is still the most convenient option for flyers, but Dillon said public transit will eventually catch on.
“Over time, as the highway congestion issues continue to grow -- because there’s only so many lanes you can put on I-91 -- we’re going to have to have coordinated programs that show to folks the utility of using high occupancy vehicle options,” Dillon said.
There’s still a long way to go. On the Bradley Flyer’s 11:33 am run last Thursday, only one passenger got on with baggage: Nitish Patidar, a Quinnipiac University professor headed to a conference in Vancouver.
Patidar said that transit in the Hartford area beats his previous home's airport transportation in Birmingham, Alabama, where there wasn't a city-to-airport bus route.
Traffic re-alignment around the old airport terminal is expected to begin in early 2016. The airport authority estimates the transit center will be open by the end of 2019.
