Government waste at its worst, Washington Dulles is renovating its “mobile lounges” moon buggies at a staggering cost of up to $160 Million.
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What Is A Mobile Lounge?
Travelers to Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) have long utilized a unique transportation vehicle known as a Mobile Lounge. This scissor-lifted 1960s relic harkens back to the early space age and is affectionately known as the “moon buggy” by frquent travelers.
“The mobile lounge/people movers get airport passengers from the main terminal to Concourse D, which is not connected to the aerotrain. The plane mates act like a mobile jet bridge, taking passengers right up to the door of parked planes.
Dulles was created at the peak of the jet age when airports were getting bigger and passengers no longer walked up a staircase to a propeller plane. Dulles architect Eero Saarinen saw mobile lounges as a convenient way to shorten walks from ticket counters to far-off planes.” – DCist
Onboard, there is seating like on a subway with seats against the walls, and middle with poles for those standing to steady themselves during movement.
Mobile Lounges depart dedicated areas and drive on the tarmac to the disconnected terminal. Underground subway trains connect some but not all aspects of the terminal and those stops are not as convenient as airports such as Dallas/Fort Worth or Houston Bush Intercontinental whereby trains run along the terminals and stop intermittently between within terminals as well as connecting them.
Dulles Renovation Program
The 60-year old vehicles are in need of repair. In total, 49 vehicles operate this segment of traveler movement. The Washington Airport Authority that greenlit the first two of the program was hesitant. It doesn’t feel the Mobile Lounges are the best feature of the airport, yet agreed to spend $8 million each for two test refurbishments before putting the full refurbishment in place.
“If airport officials are pleased with the renovations from the Brookville Equipment Corporation, they’ll have to vote on whether or not to fix the rest of the 18 mobile lounges and 29 plane mate vehicles over the next six years. That project is slated to cost $160 million in total. MWAA first put it out for procurement before the pandemic, but now costs have gotten higher thanks to the specialized components.” – DCist
Manufacturers no longer make the short-lived vehicle so replacement parts will be constructed bespoke.
That budget seems incredibly expensive. There’s no advantage that I can see to the lounges over busses with the exception of the vehicle’s elevation removing the need for elevators and escalators to take connecting travelers to ground level and simply board busses.
It feels like a clear case of governmental waste. Is there not a manufacturer that could rennovate or even build brand new vehicles for less? What about alternative solutions?
Other Solutions To Replace The Mobile Lounge
Elon Musk, among his other businesses (he actively runs four of them at the moment not including Twitter) manages The Boring Company. The aptly-named business bores tunnels underneath the surface to make way for subways, or subsurface expressways. His bids are far less than retail and he has successfully completed one in Las Vegas, as well as one in southern California. His bid for an 1.7 mile Miami tunnel was just $30 million and a completion period of six months (just 8% of the completion time of thi project.) At that price and distance, the Boring Company could run so many lines to remain cheaper than the current plan that it’s unconscionable to consider anything else. At less than 2,000 feet between terminals, The Boring Company could add 47,872 feet of bores or about 24 new subways, enough to supply quick transport to other terminals about every one and a half gates apart.
One firm that specializes in environmentally-responsible buses offers a battery-powered option for $850,000 per bus, or $535,000 for natural gas-powered buses. Assuming the rate increased from when the source article was written (2021) to even $1 million per bus, the approved budget could allow for 160 buses to replace the comparable capacity mobile lounges for which the airport has just 49. If Dulles were to replace just the 49, with natural gas-powered options (two times better than the diesel it currently burns, and cheaper to operate), the airport could maintain its fleet size but save more than $133 million.
Remote stands are common in airports across the world from Frankfurt to Dubai to Bangkok. Aircraft are parked on unused tarmac well away from the terminal and bussed in. It’s less convenient than boarding from a jetbridge, but so is getting to Terminal D at Dulles anyway, why complicate it with overpriced infrastructure in a relic of a bygone era?
Conclusion
This is a perfect example of government waste (or a governmental body.) The solution that might have been revolutionary at the time is now the least useful possible solution to this very common problem. Despite conventional options aplenty, even in this sample size, the airport authority has options that are cheaper, faster, and better but has decided against them. The space shuttle was conceived almost two decades after these went into service and it’s already been retired for 15 years. The airport authority is overpaying for a bad, slow solution.
What do you think? Should Dulles renovate the Mobile Lounges or scrap them in favor of an alternative? Which solution do you prefer?
Americans accept blatant corruption like this without even blinking. If you put out a tender to Chinese bus companies, they could easily make these brand new for $5MM or so a piece. But of course it is much harder to skim the contract that way.
corruption is a pillar of the democrat party.
100% agree with you. Especially with conversation finally happening around replacing C/D with the long planned permanent replacement. Which means long term these lounges are going away anyway.
For a lot less than 160mil you could buy busses and make the terminal changes needed to accommodate them. But it’s a good snapshot of how poorly MWAA manages things.
I really don’t think you understand how these things are used. They’re mostly used to take people from international arrivals gates on concourses A, B, and C to the customs and arrivals building. In counciuses an and B, the gates are constructed in a way such that there are mobile lounge docks for each pair of gates. Passengers get off a plane and then get on a mobile lounge and go straight to customs and immigration. In the main terminal. The only way to move from this system would be to have airplanes park on remote stands and bus them in. But the airport doesn’t have buses. They would have to therefore buy a fleet of buses and then also reconstruct, again, the international arrivals building. As of now, the only way to enter the international arrivals building from a flight is through the mobile lounge dock, so that would probably be a multimillion dollar expense right there. Concourse C is where United is. There, customers simply transiting from an international flight to a domestic flight can clear customs and immigration there, whereas mobile lounges collect Washington passengers at the far end and take them to the international arrivals building. If you can think of a better way to both collect those passengers arriving in Washington and make the connection easy for connecting passengers, let me know.
It’s very easy to sit here and scream “waste”, but you need to think of the infrastructure that’s there and how it’s being used. This article doesn’t seem to do so. I’d like to see more consideration of that angle, taking into account how things actually work at Dulles.
The failure of the MWAA to include CBP facilities in the multibillion dollar A/B terminal is the entire reason they need moon buggies. This problem could have been be solved by constructing CBP facilities in A/B (probably a lot harder now than while it was while it was being designed) or moving all international arrivals to the new C/D facility if and when they ever figure that out.
Renovating the moon buggies is simply lighting money on fire which is what we do best in DC,
If cbp were in concourses A/b, how would arriving DC passengers get to the main terminal, would there have been a sterile tunnel? If you say they could just go into concourses A/B after cbp, you do realize they would have to go through security again to enter A/B and put their bags back on the belt and pick up again at carousels in the main terminal, right? I don’t think anybody would want to do that. It would be even worse if all cbp for arriving and connecting passengers were at c/d. That’s even father. So again, how would you get arriving passengers from A/b or c/ d to the main terminal/ exit without having to go through security and rechecking/ reclaiming luggage?
And the reason arriving pax would have to clear security/ recheck and reclaim luggage is that once they’ve touched their luggage in cbp and potentially opened it, they’re not sterile anymore. They’re not allowed to just bring their luggage into the concourses either, as many items can go into
Checked luggage but not into a terminal. So again, this is a major detail that you’d have to solve and you haven’t. Who wants to go through security again if they’re arriving? Nobody. This was the setup at ATL until Concorde F opened and local Atlanta passengers hated it.
@Jason – Through your comments, (thank you for commenting) I haven’t seen a single reason why a bus wouldn’t do the same job. It’s a lifted bus, nothing more.
Happy to comment. I’m not sure how much it would cost to build ramps all the way down to ground level at every gate or two in concourse a/b plus one at the end of c. Then you also need hood rooms at those locations. Is there space? You’re talking about a big reconstruction project at several points in each concourse. Including ramps, elevators, maybe escalators. Then a whole new fleet of buses. That’s not cheap either.
It’s absolutely impossible to convert the current international moon buggie collection points into boarding stops for more traditional airport busses. And for a LOT less money.
Correction. Possible NOT impossible.
The Metro Washington Airport Authority (MWAA) is responsible for managing IAD and DCA. In addition to being unelected and accountable to no one, they are totally corrupt as shown by this plan and their many, many previous screw ups over the past several decades. ( C/D terminal failure, most expensive airport train in history that bypasses 1/4 terminals, failure to include CBP facilities in the international terminal (which is why they need moon buggies), nepotism, Toll Road management failure, subway years late and billions over budget, etc.
Money flows freely in DC. Accountability, not so much.
What? You don’t see why they’d not just use busses?
The terminal was built around these. They’d have to do a renovation of each entry area which would probably be significantly more expensive and still need to buy the busses, etc.
I agree with your broader point regarding bloated, ineffective, wasteful, bureaucracy in USA. Though, with regards to the boring company reference, specifically, I think elon is way overpromising and underdelivering
From wikipedia:
“Musk’s planned tunnels were criticized for lacking such safety features as emergency exit corridors, ventilation systems, or fire suppression”
“In 2018, [The Boring Company] claimed it would support a 15x improvement in tunneling speed over the 2017 state of the art. In 2021, TBC stated that Prufrock would tunnel six times faster than Godot. However, in the event, Prufrock achieved tunneling rates of 49 ft/day, similar to conventional machines.”
Not to mention, the tunnels boring companies make are not big enough to fit mass transit vehicles like automated people mover trains. Boring company tunnel throughput using Tesla sedans is very low. And they seem to have dropped the whole plan of having the tesla’s drive themselves through the tunnel. Intuitively, I would say if, after 5 years, the tesla’s can’t drive themselves on a static, closed course, shielded from the elements, with only other teslas – then thats not as easy a feat as they made it out to be
Airport authority should never sign off on tunnel project that does not meet most stringent fire, ventalation, and evacuation protocals. that seems like total non-starter. not to mention they save money by cutting tunnels too small for mass transit use
@Henry – I agree, no project should be signed off without stringent safety measures, however, TBC has also built the only hyperloop test track, and while speeds of that are unnecessary, building vehicles that can inside the tube is possible and well within the budget and timeline. You wouldn’t build 24 tubes, you’d build 6-8 and have them run larger trains more frequently.
Regardless, there’s no reasonable claim that the current equipment now isn’t akin to a bus on a scissor lift. Buses will do just fine.
The Vegas loop is not a great example and can never move the traffic that is at IAD. It just a bunch of cars that move remotely thru a tunnel as their own website shows, it is not mass transportation. https://www.boringcompany.com/vegas-loop. The mobile lounges work better than many of the bus systems I seen at many other airports.
There has to be more to this.
I have experience with a large fleet of public safety vehicles. A fire department ladder truck, new, in today’s dollars ranges from $1.7-$2.2M. A ladder truck is far more complex than the mobile lounges (of which I’ve experienced more times that I can count). A full refurbishment of a ladder truck is about 75% of a new ladder truck. An OK refurbishment, say, the electrical and hydraulic systems are in good shape, is about 50% of a new ladder truck. I can’t imagine that the price tag is $8M per vehicle, hence my comment that there must be something more to this.
I stopped taking this seriously when you invoked Elon Musk. The Boring Company, like so many of his loudly announced ventures is a confidence trick. He dug a tunnel and drove cars through it. There’s no scalability and little safety. He’s better than the Titanic guy, but just barely.
most elon haters are nothing more than snowflake liberals who are angry he took away their echo chamber and propaganda machine twitter.
Elon built the electric car industry and private space industry.
Seems like you definitely got the musk brain implant
The “mobile lounge” concept was an aesthetic and functional design decision intended to concentrate all passenger processing activities in the main terminal and eliminate the need to walk long distances to the gate where the flight was departing. The docks to the mobile lounges are no more than 100 feet from the ticket counter. From the 1960s to the mid-1980s, Dulles had very few daily flights and most of them were in the morning and afternoon and almost all of them were international and coast to coast wide-body flights. There were a sufficient number of boarding docks so that passengers could board the mobile lounges (often two lounges at one time for the same flight) and drive directly to the two open aircraft doors – one in the front and one in the rear. The aircraft was parked away from the terminal and other aircraft. Once everyone was seated. the plane was ready for take off. It was, at the time, a modern. unique and elegant way to begin a long haul flight. Arriving was just as streamlined – two dedicated lounges to take passengers directly from the aircraft to the baggage claim area or US customs and immigration.
Then, in the late 1980s. United Airlines decided to make Dulles a north-south hub airport and erected the “midfield terminal” that was constructed in record time and looked and felt like an enormous mobile home or low-budget prefabricated warehouse. When United named it the “C concourse,” they insisted that it would soon be replaced with a more permanent structure similar the to award-winning terminal one at O’Hare airport in Chicago. That temporary terminal was used for over 40 years and to make matters worse, they added another twin structure, the D concourse, right beside the fist one and connected the two. The Dulles C-D concourse is extremely narrow making walking while crowded a real challenge. In fact it is the longest concourse in the world that lacks any moving sidewalks. It is over a kilometer long, or just under ¾ of a mile. Because this horribly designed terminal was located over a half mile from the main terminal, the airport authority decided to use the mobile lounges as shuttle buses from the lounge docks already in the main terminal and construct similar docks in the pre-fab building out in the mid-field. The area previously used by travelers waiting to board the mobile lounge to the door of their aircraft in the main terminal was converted to the new security checkpoint. They installed two sets of mobile lounge boarding docks – one in concourse C and another in concourse D. There was an attempt to locate them centrally, bur additions were added to the end of both concourses. so they ended up being 1/3 of the the distance from one end and 2/3 of the distance from the other.
In the early days, a few international airlines kept up the terminal-to=aircraft service model but by the end of the 1990s, these airlines were all clustered at the end of the D concourse and then all travelers had to use the mobile lounges to access the midfield terminal to catch their flights. After the opening of the hub at Dulles, United acquired a large number of international routes from the bankrupt Pan Am and Dulles became a major international gateway for the United network. From a handful of flights in the early 1980s, by the early 1990s there were over 150 daily departures plus those of other airlines. Some used the A gates at the main terminal meant for short haul flights, but most ended up out in the midfield.
With such rapid expansion and a dire need for a proper permanent airport facility to manage the extra passenger loads and aircraft lift, it is evident the the airport authority and United were happy to just keep adding gates to an already obsolete structure and transport travelers on vehicles designed and built over 60 years ago for a distinct and different purpose. To mitigate the inconvenience of having to push into an overcrowded mobile lounge and then potentially walk the better part of a kilometer to reach the gate, an underground train was built and it did not take into account the travelers traveling from the dreaded D concourse? Where was the planning commission? The engineers? The environmental impact express? Those 60 year-old mobile lounges guzzle diesel fuel and they run continuously from before dawn until after midnight.
A better solution would have been to demolish either C or D, and in its place, hire a design team and architects to build a permanent terminal with a rail connection that accommodates more aircraft than the straight line concourse of C and D did. operate out of the remaining terminal and use the mobile lounges as they were intended to transport passengers from the main terminal to remote aircraft stands while construction is ongoing, When complete, open the new permanent terminal with premium facilities and a rail rapid connection to the main terminal and finally demolish the remaining 40 year old structure. Donate the mobile lounges to NASA for use at the rocket launch sites.
The United midfield terminal was obsolete five years after it was built. Instead of investing in a proper facility, workers at Dulles have cramped, inadequate, dirty employee work areas and customers have to navigate an uninviting, cramped, narrow concourse that is poorly signed, a nightmare for the physically challenged with gate areas lacking enough seats. In summary, Dulles is a dump of an airport that takes more than double the time than other airports to get to the boarding gate and is in desperate need of a total rebuild. Spending all of that money to repair obsolete, 60 year-old vehicles and calling that progress says everything there is to say about IAD.
Jeff, that was a pleasure to read. Much thanks. I always enjoyed Dulles airport despite the minor annoyances but now you’ve come to make me realize how much it needs a rebuild. I’m surprised nobody mentioned how awful it is that American airports don’t have international transit area so that foreign passengers don’t have to go through passport control to simply fly onto a non-American destination.
I’ll also add that the silver line only has two rails meaning that if there’s track work or a disabled car on the line, massive delays ensue and there’s no option for an express train.
Actually, we used to! Miami was a hub for Iberia flights which panned out to Central America after receiving the incoming Madrid flight; the services from across Central America worked in reverse moving people to the MAD departure. Unfortunately, the events of 9/11 killed the concept and the transit lounges as the US demande everyone process through US Customs and have visas to enter the country – even if just for a short layover for onward international connection.
Good summary/analysis. One thing though I was thinking about was when you said it was the longest concourse that lacks moving sidewalks. I’m not sure the actual distance, but UA’s IAH concourse C/E might very well either be a similar distance or greater. Granted when E was first built it had moving sidewalks, but as part of UA’s terminal redesigns they were removed making the trek from the far southeast corridor of C to E an extremely long walk.
@Jeff:
Like the very detailed response. However, IIRC, the midfield terminal was created for Presidential Airways; not UA (minor point, I know).
Also, you totally omit the main reason behind the state of affairs @ Dulles… The Silver Line. Again, IIRC, MWAA made the decision to sacrifice building a permanent terminal to replace C/D on the altar of funding for the Silver Line. Now that it is finally up and running, they’re starting to try and address that issue.
But, it’s going to be a long while. There is a cost to building the necessary infrastructure (i.e., escalators, elevators, and the structures they would be housed in) to move from the mobile lounges to buses, and I guarantee you it’d be a heck of a lot more than this solution, especially when you figure in the environmental impact studies, union contracts, and other items that inflate virtually any public construction project in this country.
And I’ll take the mobile lounges any day over the death march from the subway to the C concourse, or flying out of the seventh level of hades otherwise known as BWI.
Busses at this scale aren’t compatible with federal disability access law.
@ Greg. Excellent point. I have enjoyed the mobile lounges from the get go. Again they were Saarinen’s design and important to him. They have served IAD well. Part of the iconic beauty. My approach is not to mess with what is lovely and works.
Saarinen has been dead for over 60 years. Why should anybody care what a long dead person wants, particularly when it makes living people miserable everyday. IAD is and always was a poor design for which Saarinen deserves a lot of the blame, but to let his bad ideas control the living from the grave is obscene.
Some corrupt democrat will most likely make a lot of money from this.
The contractor running this is a Republican heavy company.
I think I saw one of these at my local antique store
I hope this doesn’t affect the budget to the new C/D concourse and leave United replacing a half-a55ed building with another half-a55ed building.
@ Mak. Other than Saarinen being dead, I
completely disagree. If Dulles makes you so miserable you are free to use DCA or BWI. Good luck and good night
An understanding of how airports are run and their funding sources are definitely needed. MWAA is an Aviation Authority, this means the airport is run as an authority and is not overseen by local government. Aviation authorities run pretty much as a business on their own right, they raise money doing business activities and spend as they see fit. Local and government taxes do not fund airport authorities. Any funding that comes in to an airport through taxes and fees, such as PFCs are overseen by the FAA and there are strict rules on how these are spent. Believe me when I say the money that is being spent on the overhaul of these units are by no means coming from government funds (i.e. Build Back Better) or taxes/fees levied on airline tickets. This kind of refurbishment will come from the running of the airport. The money the airport makes from running as a business will be spent on this refurbishment. So this is not “government waste” this is money the airport has raised from the business of running an airport and are choosing to spend on this project.
I have used IAD since the mid-1960s when it was an elegant, easy-to-navigate gem replete with a fine dining restaurant, The mobile lounges were terrific, once you checked-in, you proceeded a few steps to the lounge and were moved to your aircraft. As long as TWA and Air France operated 707s and Pan Am had the 707 or DC-8 to London and a very few domestic flights operated all was well. The arrival of the 747 changed the equation and the necessity to move up to 400 people overwhelmed the efficiency of the concept. To maintain the artistic integrity of Saarinen’s design, the main terminal building was doubled in size but hasty add-ons and an expanding roster of airlines serving the National Capital Region have aggravated IAD’s slip into obsolesce which the Airport Authority has struggled to remedy: underground train that leaves the passengers to walk forever; dungeon-like overcrowded TSA security area; Terminals C/D which are a disgrace, but were never meant to be anything other than temporary. Keep in mind, it is the federal capital, thus Congress has a huge say in what happens – not an excuse, but it does have an impact on any major project in the area, to include IAD and DCA. At this point, in the absence of a master plan to replace C/D and connect the new terminal with the train, we are left with the Mobile lounges. They connect to the buildings, do not require anyone to go up or down stairs and hold a lot of people. Convenient, no; but much better than busses.
Attended the Opening of IAD in Nov 1962. Dad drove our family from Falls Church. JFK spoke. I don’t remember his speech but I remember how it made me feel. I felt proud to be an American and proud of our president and our great country. The airport terminal was one of the coolest buildings I had ever seen ( I was 15). We rode in the “people movers” that were on display.
Love the mobile lounges at IAD. They make arriving internationally a highlight of a trip to the US. Many airports have great experiences departing but few have any interesting experiences when arriving. The mobile lounges are a great reminder of the Golden Age of air travel and really compliment the Saarinen terminal. Along with ZRH with the Heidi Train and the James Bond set like escalator ride down to the railway station IAD is one of my two favourite airports to arrive into precisely because of the mobile lounges.
Is this supposed to be a joke?