=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SF Gate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/chronicle/archive/2002/02= /21/MN118224.DTL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Thursday, February 21, 2002 (SF Chronicle) Trains without track/2-car rail vehicles on tires to take travelers around = SFO Marshall Wilson, Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writers Planes, trains and automobiles -- soon San Francisco International Airpo= rt will have them all. The newest addition is called AirTrain -- and sometime this fall the newfangled teal-blue trains will be whisking travelers around SFO's myriad parking lots, passenger terminals and assorted outlying buildings. Eager airport officials offered a sneak-preview ride for reporters yesterday on board a new two-car train. "It took 75 years, but San Francisco airport finally has its own train set, " said airport spokesman Ron Wilson, likening the new trains to children's toys and sounding like a big kid himself. "I'd like to bring you back a little bit to your childhood," he said. Trains, of course, are pricey toys even for the nation's fifth-busiest airport. Each of the 38 cars cost $1.2 million, and the entire project, including the 6.3 miles of track, cost $500 million. But when the trains are put into service this fall -- airport officials flatly refuse to give a more precise date -- the airport will eliminate the rental-car shuttle buses and the buses that endlessly circle outside the terminals like so many goldfish in a bowl. That will greatly decrease congestion on the terminal roadways as well as air pollution, officials promise. The trains, built by Bombardier Transportation, are projected to reduce airport traffic by 23 percent and can accommodate 3,400 passengers per hour, according to airport officials. The two-car trains will carry riders to nine stops throughout the airport 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A 10th stop is planned at a future hotel site. The maximum wait time between trains will not exceed 3 1/2 minutes. And although a top speed of 35 mph doesn't exactly make it a bullet trai= n, AirTrain will allow a trip from the rental car center to the passenger terminals in nine minutes. All rides will be free, but passengers can expect to pay the customary $2 to use a baggage cart, which officials promise will have brakes so they don't slide around like marbles on a dashboard. The electric-powered AirTrain also will tie into the airport's new BART station. That will allow people to glide to San Francisco International on BART and then hop aboard AirTrain to their airport jobs or waiting flights. BART is spending roughly $1.5 billion to build an eight-mile line from Colma south of San Francisco to Millbrae, with a spur that links directly into SFO's new international terminal. BART was supposed to start service by the end of last year. BART officials on hand for yesterday's AirTrain show-and-tell steadfastly refused to offer up an opening date for their project, which is being built and financed independent of the airport's AirTrain. Project manager James Van Epps would say only that it would start its airport service "sometime this fall." It should be noted that fall does not end until midnight Dec. 20. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, airport officials ha= ve pretty much grown accustomed to a stream of bad news: security breaches, fewer passengers, falling revenues, airlines cutting flights. Yesterday's ride aboard the shiny metallic AirTrain offered a brief respite from the aviation gloom. And, the train actually worked. As the assembled crowd stepped aboard the new train, it was clear that plenty of work remains to be done. One of the cars was newly furnished with blue wall-to-wall carpeting; the other car had its metal floor showing, and two cardboard boxes sat on the floor in the middle of the train. An automated voice instructed riders to step away from the doors and hold on. A very smooth, electrical hum could be heard as the train left a station at an international terminal parking garage. The cars run on rubber wheels, not rails, and are pilotless -- commanded by a master computer and overseen by two full-time train monitors tucked away in a control center filled with video screens and computer monitors. The trains are fully automated, designed to run without human interference. One thing became clear on the brief ride: AirTrain isn't for those afraid of heights. The train runs about 70 feet off the ground -- over freeway ramps and BART tracks and close to the height of the airport's control tower. But it also offers riders a sweeping view of Millbrae, San Bruno and Sou= th San Francisco out the west windows and of the airport out the east windows. The entire system, airport officials said, is about 85 percent complete and is similar to trains in place at the Atlanta and Denver airports. "We don't want to be the guinea pig for other airports," Wilson said. E-mail the reporters at marshallwilson@sfchronicle.com and hlee@sfchronicle.com.=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2002 SF Chronicle