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Work is underway on Auckland Airport’s new $300 million Transport Hub, part of a wider $3.9 billion construction programme set to transform the airport over the next five or six years.
The first stage of the Transport Hub, a covered pick-up and drop-off area, should be open early next year and the remaining stages later in 2024.
Auckland Airport chief commercial officer Mark Thomson says the development gives the airport a high-quality facility under cover directly adjacent to the international terminal and the future domestic jet terminal.
“It is something we haven’t had in the past. Not only will people park in the facility, but rental cars will operate there as well. Yet the most important part is what we call the PUDO, or, ‘pick-up and drop-off’ area.”
“It’s going to be under cover so family and friends can drop people off or pick them up where it is a short walk through to the terminals. That’s going to give people a much better experience but it also means we have much more capacity right at the front of the terminal so people can get in and out much more quickly.”
Thomson says one of the key features of the wider airport development programme is that buildings have been planned with a view to the longer-term future. That’s also true of the Transport Hub.
“It has been future-proofed around sustainability. A lot of thought has gone into looking at future transport modes and how we accommodate those. There is a very big, double-height ground floor to cater to a variety of different modes.
“If and when they arrive, regardless of whether it’s light rail or bus rapid transit. The whole system links up and provides an excellent experience whatever mode you use to come to the airport.”
Travellers familiar with Auckland Airport will find there is a lot of room in the Transport Hub.
The main undercover pick-up and drop-off area will be 160 metres long. There will also be some additional outdoor space. Thomson says the undercover part is critical especially given projections of future weather patterns and there will be no shortage of capacity.
The big challenge for Auckland Airport is that all the development work needs to take place while normal business continues.
“It’s a live environment. We want to build the new developments well and we want to future-proof them. The key to doing this is careful staging of projects. By building the Transport Hub now, we can do important work later, constructing the integrated terminal while our customers are largely unaffected.”
Sustainability is baked into the entire development programme and features in the Transport Hub.
The airport’s design team looked at the construction materials to reduce the environmental impact. There is also a lot of timber in customer areas. More unusually, the building is supported by timber piles in place of concrete and steel.
“We tested to make sure these are the right products, and we were pleased that timber pilings performed extremely well. Underneath the structure we have somewhere in the order of 1500 timber piles. We’ve been able to use the offcuts from the timber piles in other areas including public open spaces and the playground area.”
The Transport Hub will have electric vehicle charging.
Thomson says: “We’re putting a significant solar array on the building that will generate approximately 1.2 megawatts. Much of the vehicle charging that we will do will be fed from there and it will also power the office building.
“We know there is already a big shift towards electric vehicles and have been focused on this. It means making sure the infrastructure exists in the building not only for electric vehicle charging but also that we can do it sustainably.”
Auckland Airport is aiming for 5-Star Green certification for the Transport Hub office building and a Gold Parksmart rating for the car park. It expects this to be the first Parksmart rating in New Zealand.
Thomson says Parksmart is a voluntary certification process.
“It’s from the US and is widely recognised there. It recognises hybrid performance buildings that deliver sustainability on a number of levels, not just the built environment but how the design improves mobility, resources and the guidance systems that can avoid unnecessary driving in the building. It takes building maintenance into account and its ability to generate electricity.
He says the ventilation system is key to the building’s efficiency.
“There is energy-efficient lighting throughout the building and the ventilation system has been designed to avoid using electricity at all.”
The Transport Hub is a large building. The ground floor will cover much of what was previously parking space in front of the terminal. There are four floors, each of 14,000sq m for a total of around 70,000sq m of undercover drop off and short-term car parking space. There will be around 2100 car parks in the building with another 410 to the rear.
“These are big floor plates. It contains a ramping system that gives fast access to the upper levels. While it is a big structure, it is not imposing,” Thomson says.
“One of the things we looked at when we thought about building heights was to make sure we still get natural light to all parts of the airport.
“The area around the building is a key part of what we call our landside system. This includes not only the roadways and access lanes throughout the airport but also a significant amount of landscaped open areas, plant areas and covered walkways.
“We’ve added a number of mature trees including fully established pōhutukawa trees.
The Transport Hub and mass transit
“The new building doesn’t just connect transport to the terminal, it is part of the area between the Novotel hotel and Te Arikinui Pullman hotel which is due to be completed later this year.
“The landscaping will finish around the same time as the building, so anyone coming to the airport will have an entirely different experience to in the past.
“We’ve created a plaza for passengers and airport workers to enjoy. For many people it will be their first experience of New Zealand.”
Auckland Airport’s Transport Hub is a two-year project. Thomson says the work is tracking well and on time.
He says the first big milestone is at the end of this year when the ground floor is completed, which will allow the airport to open the new pick-up and drop-off area early in the New Year.
The ground floor is built to double the usual height which allows room for buses to use it temporarily when it first opens, but also offers the flexibility needed to deal with future transport modes such as light rail.
It’s been designed for vehicles to flow through the building and there will be two lanes to help deal with high demand at peak times.
“The first phase enables us to use that area for commercial vehicles. This means a lot of the activity that now happens at the front of the current terminal can be relocated. That frees up space for the infrastructure team to start building work on the facade of the terminal,” Thomson says.
The second phase will be around a year later when the hub is completed; then the office building and car parking can open.
· Auckland Airport is an advertising sponsor of the Herald’s Infrastructure report.
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