Airport car parking

Tessa Johnstone at Dom Post reports:

The new car park layout at Wellington Airport may be drawing condemnation online, but only nine people have bothered to complain officially.

Wellington City Council candidate Sarah Free called the redesigned car park, which opened on October 1, a “slalom course”, claiming it took 30 minutes for her to pick someone up and cost $7.

“I spent a totally frustrating, and dangerous, 10 minutes circling narrow laneways, fruitlessly looking for a car park, witnessing near collisions as cars tried to turn into blind corners, and finally finding a car park at the remotest end of the upper level,” she said online.

Ms Free said that although the situation was improving as the project was being finished, she still had concerns about the visibility of signs and a lack of parking and pay stations.

Transport planner Neil Douglas also complained online, claiming the new layout was leading to delays with taxis and shuttles. He and about 25 other passengers had to wait about 20 minutes for a taxi after they came off midnight flights from Australia last week, he said.

Wellington Airport has followed Auckland Airport in designing a transport pick up and drop off system that fucks over the passengers as much as possible.

At Auckland you now have to walk for long distances in the rain to get to the taxi stand, and in Wellington you now risk getting charged just for dropping someone off.

Airports are near-monopolies, and good customer experience seems to rank near bottom of their criteria for decision making.