Skytrain update: Miami airport planning bus trips to make up for suspended train service
With no word on when Skytrain service will return to Miami International Airport’s main concourse, passengers soon will have an option to take a bus instead of walking the mile needed to reach the most remote gates.
The shuttle bus is scheduled to start sometime in November, an MIA spokesperson said Friday, as the county-owned airport awaits an engineering report on whether deteriorated concrete discovered in one station five weeks ago requires the entire train to remain closed during repairs on the train structure atop Concourse D.
“Additional inspections, analysis, and testing continue to be conducted” on the Skytrain structure, Greg Chin, the MIA spokesperson, said in an email Friday. “The results of that analysis are expected in November.”
READ MORE: ‘Extensive structural cracking’ closed MIA’s Skytrain. That means a mile walk for many
Skytrain is a $130 million automated train built in 2010 that normally runs between the D17 and D47 gates and is designed to transport up to 9,000 passengers an hour. Concourse D is the main home to American Airlines at the airport.
Skytrain shut down on Sept. 15 after inspectors found ‘extensive structural cracking’ on a few concrete piers holding up the tracks the trains use, according to records released last month by Miami-Dade County’s Aviation Department.
The closure meant long walks for passengers in the airport’s busiest concourse, the mile-long string of D gates serving about 80,000 passengers a day. The farthest, at D60, sits more than a mile away from the start of the concourse.
Chin’s email said that damage discovered in September was confined to one of the four Skytrain stations on Concourse D, raising the possibility of reopening the other three stations during repairs.
The damage is on Station 1, at D17. Under the scenario Chin described, there’s a chance train service could resume for the other stations, between D24 and D47.
Without Skytrain, American has been running a pair of golf-cart shuttles for passengers along with carts for those asking for assistance ahead of time. MIA initially operated the pair of golf carts for passengers not able to make the trek on foot, but Chin said Friday that American has taken over that service.
American passengers requesting wheelchairs may be assigned the carts, and shuttle drivers are instructed to stop for people who appear to need assistance, he said. American operates all of the flights in and out of Concourse D.
MIA plans to operate the bus outside the concourse next month, running between Gates D10 and D55.
With its expanded cart service, American plans to have stops in Concourse D where passengers can wait for available seats, Chin said. Drivers also will look for travelers with mobility issues needing to be picked up along the way.
