Posted Aug 26, 2020, 2:38 AM
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Join Date: Sep 2015
Location: Austin, TX
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Expansion plans are now pushed out by 2-3 years, due to the collapse in travel from the pandemic. Target is now to do design work in 2023 and 2024, and construction from 2025 through 2027.
Quote:
Coronavirus pandemic could delay Austin airport expansion two to three years
By Daniel Salazar – Staff Writer, Austin Business Journal
Aug 25, 2020, 7:29am CDT
Officials at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport are deferring more than $1 billion of work because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Early design work for the long-planned airport expansion, which could double the facility's capacity, was supposed to start next year. But projects such as a new concourse are on hold for now, causing a ripple effect that could delay the entire project by two to three years.
The delay may be shortened if flyers return in droves. But it's unclear if that will happen.
"This is a continuing saga," said Lyn Estabrook, the airport's planning and development division director. "We may have to push things out further if the passengers don't come back."
"We hope that Austin continues to be a strong economy, people continue to want to move here and people feel safe to fly," she added. "We hope that people do come back and start flying again."
While Austin-Bergstrom has been one of the country's fastest-growing airports, the pandemic has pummeled the entire industry by drying up revenue on everything from fares and landing fees to parking and concessions. Besides being a large contracting opportunity, the airport expansion is seen as critical by many in the business community for connecting Central Texas to more of the world.
$1.6B impact
The airport has a five-year capital improvement program outlining the construction planned at the sprawling Southeast Austin facility. The program was substantially revised after the Covid-19 pandemic hit Austin, as leisure and business travel largely froze.
"Something we normally do in four to six months we did in a span of about a month," Estabrook said of revising the capital improvement plan or CIP.
Many projects and timelines have been shifted by two to four years because of the pandemic.
The airport's capital spending was supposed to peak in 2024, with more than $800 million in major construction costs. But now it's expected to peak in 2026 and 2027.
Pre-pandemic, there was going to be $2.8 billion of total airport CIP funding in the next five fiscal years of the city budget. Spending is now expected to be $1.2 billion, a difference of $1.6 billion.
"It's quite a large deferment," Estabrook said.
Affected airport projects include the construction of the second concourse, improvements within the existing Barbara Jordan Terminal in order to connect to the second concourse, a tunnel to the new concourse, curbside upgrades and more taxiways.
"All of those projects shifted and are being postponed or deferred about two to three years," Estabrook said.
Airport officials remain committed to an underground tunnel connecting the two concourses instead of an above-ground connection.
"We had to do a tunnel anyway for utility and baggage," Estabrook said.
Early design work for the expansion was supposed to come in 2021, with more intensive design work in 2022 and construction beginning in 2023. But now design work may not happen until 2023 and 2024, with construction beginning in 2025 and heavier construction coming in 2026 and 2027.
ABIA handled a record of more than 17.3 million passengers in 2019. Prior to the pandemic, the expansion was expected to add up to 32 gates, increasing capacity to 31 million by 2037.
Covid-19's ripple effects
While the number of passengers flying in and out of Austin has increased since April, traffic remains drastically down from this time last year.
"The whole airport and airline industry has been heavily impacted by this," Estabrook said. "We're still seeing percentages that are 80% to 90% less than what we should be hitting for this time of year and [it's] every month."
Experts across the industry believe air traffic won't return in earnest until a Covid-19 vaccine is developed and made widely available.
"We could have a vaccine in the U.S. maybe by the winter and so we hope things will pick up next summer," Estabrook said.
That's a more optimistic scenario because the recovery could be much slower, Estabrook said.
"We look to 9/11 and what that recovery was and, [for] most airports, it took about two years for them to recover," she said. "It took Austin closer to a year and a half."
The uncertainty of when traffic will return makes long-term planning extremely difficult, she added.
"All of the models that we've used for the past 20 to 40 years aren't going to work anymore," Estabrook said. "So it's really hard for us to estimate this time next year ... what our numbers are going to be."
"We used to look at data monthly. We're looking at data daily now," she added.
What's next
The airport is still working on its environmental assessment for the full master plan — a process with the Federal Aviation Administration that can last a year or a year and a half. Design and site plan approvals would need to come after that.
If the new concourse has 20 gates, construction could last two and a half years, Estabrook said. Building 10 gates at the new concourse would take about 18 months.
Future passenger totals — now trickier than ever to predict — could impact whether the airport's postponements stay in place.
In the meantime, officials are working on "make-ready" projects like the environmental assessment and other planning studies.
"If the numbers are looking good, we can shift everything back [to prior plans]," Estabrook said. "If not, we'll have all those planning tasks that we can continue through and really be prepared in a methodical and a wise way for the expansion."
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https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/n...passenger.html
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