The Underground APM at Washington Dulles International Airport

Since the airport opened in 1962, Washington Dulles International (Dulles) has employed the use of a large fleet of mobile lounges (called plane-mates and mobile lounges) to move passengers between the Terminal and aircraft, and in recent years, between the Terminal and the midfield concourses. Continued development of the airport will exceed the capacity of the mobile lounges and necessitate the building of an alternate passenger conveyance system. To meet Dulles' future capacity requirements, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) is moving forward with planning, design, and procurement activities for a new underground automated people mover (APM) system. Issues such as the most appropriate APM alignment have been studied for several years. This paper provides an overview of some of the APM planning considerations that led to the identification of the preferred alignment alternative, the process used to determine system ridership demand, and a description of the system configuration being designed today.