Crosstown Traffic: Finding room at the most congested airports

Facilitating movement

While sparkling new facilities can help ease the squeeze at many older airports, sometimes a few new roads to provide better access can make a world of difference.

Take JFK, for example. An airport travel plaza opened in March 2014 and parking for large trucks just opened in June 2015. Both additions cater to truckers and the trucking industry by providing high-speed diesel fueling, a 24-hour food court, a 24-hour medical facility, and now parking. The plaza is centrally located on airport with access from off-airport locations and easy truck maneuvering within the facility.

“This is vital for 53-foot trailers, which continue to be the industry standard,” said Michael Bednarz, man­ager, air cargo business development for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. “It makes JFK especially attractive to the longer-haul truckers, freight forwarders and shippers that are making choices in terms of which airport to move their goods through.” Bednarz said it also offers a heightened level of security. Although the facility has only been open a short time, the operator reported already seeing in­creased interest and activity, whether from individual truckers looking for short-term parking or entire fleets looking for long-term arrangements.

Bednarz added that the Port Author­ity is also in negotiations with a ground handling agent and a developer to build a new cargo facility in the north cargo area at JFK. It will be configured in a two-story design, which will be unique among cargo facilities in North America, he said. The facility will be approximately 350,000 square feet in Phase I, with another 200,000 when it is completed.

It takes a village

In some cases, an airport can feel hard to navigate, even when there is ample land to expand. Such is the case in Edmonton, Canada. One of Canada’s fastest growing cities, Edmonton is the logistics center for the province of Alberta’s oil and gas industry and home to the country’s northernmost interna­tional airport.

Edmonton International Airport has seen five consecutive years of growth in cargo volume, mainly driven by the energy industry and manufacturing to support it. Although the price of oil is in a slump, the energy market in Alberta, now based on extracting oil from tar-sand deposits, hasn’t declined but rather has flat-lined, according to Alex Lowe, the manager of cargo busi­ness development at EIA. “It was time to push toward more modern, larger facilities,” he said.

While the focus is on air cargo, Lowe said ground transportation is equally important, and so EIA is following the trending concept of the “cargo village.” Rather than having cargo infrastruc­ture scattered around a sprawling air­port, a cargo village places members of the supply chain in a more logical and efficient manner, close to customs staff as well as freight forwarders.

Already up and running is a 110,000-square-foot new airside facil­ity, half of which is now occupied by Canadian forwarder Braden-Burry Expediting. Lowe emphasized that real estate is just one part of modern­izing EIA. “In these facilities, we are cognizant of the need for cooler space and large cargo x-ray machines,” Lowe said. Braden-Burry, for example, has everything needed for temperature-sensitive cargo.

Another 110,000 square feet of new airside space will be built in the next year or two by private developers, which Lowe said is a strong indication of confidence in the air cargo market. Groundside, a 250,000-square-foot facility is under construction, which will be completed this year. Included in this facility is a 211,000-square-foot truck terminal and a warehouse be­ing built for Rosenau Transport Ltd. Rosenau, established in 1957, is one of the largest regional carriers in Western Canada, so building on air­port is important to its ability to move freight expeditiously.

In addition to its trucking services in Western Canada, Roseneau Transport has warehouses in three provinces, and company president Carl Rosneau said he has plans to add cold storage capacity for airfreight arriving or leav­ing EIA, as well as for short-term stor­age. He also saw a need to be near the Leduc-Nisku Industrial Park, across the highway from the airport, so his facility could serve both the airfreight industry and the industrial park, which lacks warehous­ing capacity.

The highway adjacent to EIA is part of the Canada-Mexico corridor, a trade route that has four lanes running all the way from Grand Prairie, Alberta, to Bakersfield, Calif. where it continues to Mexico on highway I-5. With such a strategic location, Rosenau plans to build another 220,000-square-foot warehouse, which will be operational in 2018. “We hope all carriers flying in and out of EIA will use our services. That is why we built there,” he said.

EIA’s Lowe said yet another ground­side building is planned, for lease to freight forwarders. Additionally, EIA has invested $15 million into more than doubling the size of its cargo apron, adding parking for two 747-8-size aircraft. Investments have been made in equipment as well, including a new main-deck cargo loader. All these improvements have increased busi­ness, as shown by KLM launching four-times-a-week service to Amsterdam.