Corgan's 1989 plans to rebuild DFW
Posted by UA888@reddit | aviation | View on Reddit | 16 comments
Corgan's 1989 plans to rebuild DFW into massive satellite piers similar to Dubai. It would have been so amazing if these plans became a reality. It is definitely a more efficient design than today's outdated terminals catering to the drop-off concept.
Read full story here https://www.airporthistory.org/dfw-rebuild-2.html
Principle_Dramatic@reddit
This would have massive TSA lines.
Passengers would be absolutely hosed if even one train went down.
This style was very much against the grain for 1989 where people could pick up people at the gate. It would have been bleeding edge for the hub and spoke model.
Toothless-Rodent@reddit
They keep doubling down and building more horse shoes, but a consolidated design would make a much better airport for customers.
abstract_concept@reddit
Disagree.
DFW has excellent service for arriving and departing passengers because of its high ratio of entrance / exits to gates. Stick or pier designs concentrate that into a single area that is usually highly congested.
For connecting passengers the airport is topologically a giant loop, moving from any gate to any other gate is constrained by the connecting train speed but ultimately bound at moving halfway around the circle.
Personally any pier style airport that drops me off at the ass end of pier A to connect to the ass end of Pier b while transiting the super crowded middle section to get between the piers is bad design. You're creating edges and ends that few people will use. Looking at you ATL, DEN, etc.
Toothless-Rodent@reddit
Yeah, I should have stipulated *for connecting passengers.” You’re right about O&D and the convenience of direct access. But I’ll add that facilities such as baggage claim suffer because of this design. It’s all much more constrained. Good we have these laboratories to stress-rest different models!
Growly150@reddit
Why is having the terminal in a line more efficient than a semicircle? Because there are gates on both sides? Is that the only reason?
kgramp@reddit
Guessing fewer conflicting pushbacks between the semicircles helps too. Smaller building compared to the ramp space for the semicircle but fewer conflicts between terminals on a straight terminal.
Xyllus@reddit
DFW is great because the traffic gets split up at the entrance level. lots of separate entry points mean shorter lines, at least from my experience...
TwinCessna@reddit
Glad we decided to go with claustrophobic 10 foot wide hallways full of cart drivers yelling at you to move.
therealjerseytom@reddit
That satellite pier would be ~1.3 miles long.
The concourses at DEN feel pretty long at ~0.6-0.8 miles.
BigDiesel07@reddit
Ahh, McNamara terminal with a \~38% increase if it was \~1.3 miles long. I would not want to have a tight connection that was at the opposite end.
UA888@reddit (OP)
Yeah, it would have had 3 APM stations
nermelson@reddit
Say what you will about the guy, but the fact that he was able to plan this and then go on to form the Smashing Pumpkins...pretty impressive.
pumpkinfarts23@reddit
So, 1/3 of modern DEN?
UA888@reddit (OP)
This one terminal was supposed to handle up to 70 million passengers. There was a plan to build the same satellite for Delta on the other side of the airfield that would bring the total capacity up to 100 million.
Left-Associate3911@reddit
Thanks for sharing. I didn’t know about this history.
airport-codes@reddit
I am a bot.
^(If you are the OP and this comment is inaccurate or unwanted, reply below with "bad bot" and it will be deleted.)