After trekking through an airport, waiting in long lines and sitting for hours on a cramped plane, the first thing most flyers look forward to is sinking into a hotel bed or crashing on their living room couch.
But at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, a 950-foot walk between a skybridge and the light rail station prolongs many travelers' journeys. It may seem like a short distance — one New York City block, according to the airport — but for people with disabilities, older adults or anyone airport-weary, the steps add up.
To tackle the problem, Sea-Tac is testing free self-driving shuttles that take people between the skybridge and garage area and the train.
Airport spokesperson Perry Cooper said the stretch has “been of note by our passengers for quite a while.”
“We’ve worked on different ways in which to have a transfer from the light rail station to the airport,” he said. “It’s a little bit of a walk.”
Sea-Tac kicked off a 90-day pilot program on Aug. 1 to gauge mobility, accessibility and the desire among airport-goers for a new six-seater shuttle, running from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. An engineer will accompany trips during the pilot. Passengers hop on near the blue elevator bank by Skybridge 6 – which connects the airport garage to Alaska Airlines’ ticket counter – and get dropped off at the light rail station.
Sea-Tac has a $49,999 contract with the vehicle supplier for the pilot, Cooper wrote in an email. Two driverless shuttles are available, but only one runs at a time, with the second held as a backup.
The shuttles come as the long-bemoaned walk has gotten improvements like wind barriers, radiant heaters and electric carts in recent years. And while light rail only brings in around 7% of passengers arriving at the airport, Sound Transit records some 13,000 daily boardings at the SeaTac/Airport stop. In 2016, there were about 7,000.
On a sunny afternoon last week, the SeaTac/Airport Station platform was packed with travelers carrying one, two and even three bags as they waited for the train to roll in.
Jennifer Bates, waiting at the platform after arriving from Atlanta, said although the walk to the station felt nice after a five-hour flight, it seemed long.
“I got my steps in,” she said with a laugh.
The idea for a self-driving shuttle “sounds awesome,” she said. She would’ve tried it out that afternoon, but said she couldn’t see where exactly to catch the vehicle. There are signs on either side of the route telling people about the transport, Cooper said.
The self-driving shuttle also comes in handy for Sea-Tac employees. Glory DelaCruz, who works at a chocolate shop in the airport, rode the vehicle for the first time that afternoon.
“It’s really fun to ride in,” she said.
As she sat in the shuttle, the steering wheel turned on its own, and a speaker alerted pedestrians that the vehicle was approaching. It automatically ran along one side of the walkway to give other traffic enough room to pass.
While the cart is an impressive feat of automation, seamless it is not. It’s set not to exceed 4 mph, and it stopped frequently when it detected pedestrians around it.
“It’s a little bit slow,” DelaCruz said after disembarking.
Still, she said the shuttle would be great for travelers — especially older adults. DelaCruz, who works at the airport five days a week, added that she would absolutely" ride the shuttle again.
Anna Zivarts, who directs the Disability Mobility Initiative at Disability Rights Washington, noted that navigating an airport presents unique challenges for people with disabilities.
“If you're someone who can move fast, it's only like a 10- or a 15-minute extra walk,” she said. “For someone who's moving slower, that's much more of a time cost.”
She said she was curious how the shuttle would accommodate people with mobility devices, service animals, blindness or low vision.
There’s space on the carts for people to put items like crutches or walkers, and the airport asks that people with disabilities be given priority for rides, Cooper wrote in an email. He added that Sea-Tac didn’t specifically order a certain design for the pilot, but rather, is using what's already on the market during the assessment period to determine what works or doesn’t work.
Whether or not the shuttles are adopted after October the root of the problem remains that the light rail stops far from the airport — a feature Zivarts called “frustrating.
But due to the airport terminal's boomerang shape, building the station closer and having train tracks mirror the curve would slow the light rail down significantly, according to Sea-Tac.
As for installing a moving walkway in the stretch, the airport garage’s infrastructure makes that challenging. There’s about 2 feet of mechanical elements underneath a moving walkway, and putting that in would require cutting into structural support below the floor, Cooper explained.
Of course, travelers can still ride the manually driven cart shuttling people to and from the station that carries seven passengers and loads at the same places. But the idea behind self-driving transport, Cooper said, was to find a “technological answer” that could be more efficient, usable and accessible.
As the pilot gets underway, the airport is using surveys to assess how the shuttles are working. Riders will get handouts with QR codes, and the airport team is also talking to people along the walkway about it, Cooper said.
“We are open to feedback folks are providing, ” he said.
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