One of the 29 vehicles in the Dulles fleet
From 2003 until late 2010 I worked on the construction management team that helped Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) implement a new Automatic People Mover (APM) system. APMs are driverless vehicle systems and can be compared to horizontal elevators. APMs are in operation in about 25 US airports including Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Las Vegas, Orlando, Tampa, San Francisco, and others. There are quite a few operating internationally such as in Mardrid’s Barrajas Airport.
So APMs are nothing new, but the trick at Dulles was to construct not only the APM system, but three new passenger terminals, and massively add on to the existing Main Terminal, without impacting daily airport operations. Good trick if you can pull it off, and we did.
The photo shows one of the 29 APM vehicles in the fleet.
One car per flatbed
IAD received the APMs in four different shipments from the manufacturer, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) in Mihara, Japan, beginning in 2007. Since we were a couple of years away from Testing and Commissioning at that point, we really couldn’t play with the cars.
This photo shows a car arriving at the IAD Vehicle Maintenance Facility (VMF) on a flatbed trailer. The cars made their journey from Japan, through the Panama Canal, around Florida, and up to the Port of Baltimore where they were offloaded from ships onto trailers, and then trucked down I-95 to Dulles.
A good shot of the 40-ton crane
Mitsubushi Heavy had built a set of lifting devices and spreader bars that made removing the vehicles from the trailers a rather simple procedure. It took only a couple of hours to offload the six or so vehicles and tuck them away into the VMF.
Spin to win
One thing that I learned on this job was that there was no replacement for competent riggers, the guys with the mobile cranes. They make transfers such as this very unexciting and routine, just as it should be.
This shot shows the basic vehicle-two axles, four rubber tires, and two 100 hp electric traction motors. Similar MHI vehicles were also being installed in the Miami and Atlanta airports during this time. The major differences from the Miami and Atlanta vehicles was that the Dulles cars were designed to run as single cars if need be, whereas the Miami and Atlanta vehicles were designed to be run as “married pairs”, that is, the minimum consist on those systems was two cars. The IAD system currently runs three car trains, with the possibility to expand to four cars. Four cars is the max since station platforms and station doors won’t accommodate longer trains.
Ready to hit the ground
The paint scheme for the Dulles cars was suggested by one of the the architectural firms responsible for one of the three new passenger stations at the airport. I called it the “harlequin scheme”. Thankfully passengers don’t have much opportunity to see the cars as they come into the stations. My job was to manage the process of developing the paint scheme, not to design it. That’s not to say I didn’t attempt to slip my own ideas in, one of which was to paint each vehicle a different color. The extremely conservative engineers at IAD accepted this concept as they would a turd in a punch bowl. As you can see, my concept didn’t find wide acceptance.
The Dulles cars have steering
Once on the ground, the cars were aligned with guide rails to bring them into the VMF.
The tires are Michelins found on semis these days replacing dual drive wheels. Inflation pressure was 110 psi. Mandatory replacement life was 75,000 miles. At this mileage the tires still looked great, but having one crap out in service was not an acceptable eventuality.
Interior of the Vehicle Maintenance Facility
Each car was then dragged into the VMF to await testing and commissioning.
Chainage map of the Dulles APM system
This is what the Dulles APM system map looks like. It’s about 2.5 miles long. The VMF is on the south end at the end of the spur tunnel.
Tier 3 is a placeholder station. It’s empty with no station platform doors, air conditioning, or other operational equipment.
Tier 2 is the eastern end of the United concourse. The concourse is about a mile long so if you if your flight is from the western end of the concourse, you will want to take a Mobile Lounge from the Main Terminal. United cheaped out during the construction phase and canceled the new Tier 2 concourse. Tier 2 remains a third world airport facility.
Tier 1 West is essentially Delta with a number of international carriers such as Emirates, ANA, Air France, and British Airways. Tier 1 East are a lot of commuter gates.
Main Terminal is the domain of the TSA and is the entry point to the APM system. No one gets to ride the APM without having gone through TSA security. In airport lingo, the APM system is “airside”.
Car interior
This is what the interior of an APM looks like, specifically that of one in service at Dulles. Mainly standee room with four seats at both ends of the car. Trip times between stations is minimal. The top speed of the Dulles APM is 43 mph which can be reached quickly. Hang on, the g-forces on acceleration or braking (yeah, at the risk of being pleonastic, acceleration is the change of the rate of speed) can be unsettling.
One of my main jobs on the project was to chair the Safety Committee. I was not a safety professional, but I found that this job was one of educating the fire and police departments in what they might encounter dealing with the APM system under extreme conditions. More difficult was the Maintenance Department that wanted access to the APM tunnel during operating hours to change light bulbs. I never was able to convince them that they didn’t want to be in the tunnel with live 750V DC power. Nasty stuff. Plus driverless vehicles have no eyes and are insensitive anything in the guideway that shouldn’t be there.
![Flaming Tire of Death [Converted]](https://i0.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/10-Flaming-Tire-of-Death-.jpg)
Apocalypse Now
One of the Safety Committee members continually stymied discussion and problem resolution by citing a study done by one of the APM System consultants that hypothesized that if one of the tires on the APM were to catch fire, all hell would break loose. Her phobia was a buzzkill on a number of safety studies. It led me to design this graphic, which a number of committee members found to be apropos.
I finally assigned one of our Safety Committee members to do a risk assessment study for the probability (this crap was way beyond my expertise, or interest, but I learned, maybe too late, that my fellow committee members could be relied upon) that a tire would catch fire as per MIL 882. His study indicated that we could expect a tire fire every 11 billion years. Case closed.
I thought that the logo was pretty cool. It was made into a T-shirt which I never got. Bummer.
Thanks for writing this. The people mover is a welcome addition at IAD. Those gawdawful mobile lounges can’t die soon enough (though their history would make an interesting CC post if someone knows the background).
Re: The Tier 2 station. I haven’t flown United out of Dulles in ages, so I haven’t been to the C/D terminal in a while. According to the map on the MWAA website (http://www.metwashairports.com/file/iad_terminal_map.pdf), it looks like the only way to get to that terminal via the APM is to go past the Tier 2 station (or lack of a station) to the Teir 3 station, then to backtrack via a tunnel/moving sidewalk to terminal C. Is that right?
United must really hate its customers.
There are two ways to get to the D-Gates: take the APM to the C-Gates station and walk a mile west to the D-Gates, or take a mobile lounge from the Main Terminal to the D-Gates.
United, as were other airlines at the time, was having financial problems and chose not to build the new Tier 2, or Concourse C-D. The design for the concourse exists along with a 2000 sheet drawing package. Had United decided to build Tier 2, I would still be at Dulles.
I at least can share a photo of one. Its been a few years but I traveled to DC a few times. I don’t recall being in the new though.
A very interesting vehicle and project. My favorite part of this is your warning logo for the fearsome tire fire.
Early in my career, I was assigned the task of reviewing operating paperwork for a maker of powered equipment. Those warnings are always so “lawyered”, I tried some plain language warnings. Things like “Gasoline is combustible as Hell and will burn you badly unless you are very careful with it” did not make it through the first edit.
These must be similar to the underground ones used at SeaTac airport as the interior certainly looks familiar.
The SeaTac units were manufactured by Bombardier, but the interiors are very similar.
As a frequent passenger passing through Dulles, the preliminary stage before all of my “CC Global” posts, I thank you for the insight into the development and construction of the APM system. Having experienced all of the domestic APMs that you mentioned except for the one in Orlando, I can attest to the system in Dulles being especially stable and well maintained, and you must be one of those that we can thank for the initial quality of the system.
It is a bit sad that the old 1960s “mobile lounges” (purgatories is more like it) at Dulles are domestic products made by Chrysler, while now the APM uses Mitsubishi cars. Likewise, the DC Metro system has used train cars made by Breda Construzioni Ferroviare for most of its history, and the New York Subway system acquired US/French joint venture subway cars made in France during the 1980s and mostly Kawasaki-made cars since then. Using the best technology and designs is preferable, but the US falling behind in the rail industry is as bad or worse than the decline of the US auto industry in the 1980s and 1990s.
The DC Metro system has procured train cars in seven rounds, including the latest round (7000 series) of Kawasaki cars that aren’t yet in service, and they have used a variety of vendors, including one that was U.S. based (Rohr, for the original 1000-series cars), and others that were foreign-based but who manufactured some or all of the cars in the U.S. Final assembly of the 7000-series Kawasaki cars is being done in Lincoln, Neb.
There actually two iterations of the mobile lizards that operate at Dulles – Mobile Lounges and Plane Mates. The Plane Mates have screw jacks that raise and lower the carbody to mate with the airplane doors. When first designed (Dulles opened in 1962), the Mobile Lounges were seen as cutting edge jet age airport concepts. As the name implies, there actually were bars on board so you could chug a martini on your way to your plane.
Don’t get me started on domestic/foreign passenger railcar manufacturing. When I started in this business, Budd and Pullman Standard were still in business, but not for long. As far as I know, Kawasaki’s manufacturing plant in Lincoln, NE is the only facility in the US with the capability of fabricating stainless steel car bodies. Bombardier has a couple of facilities in New York State and Vermont but they are for assembly, not manufacturing.
Does any other company besides Mitsubishi make a people mover? It seems that all the ones I see recently are these, we have the same ones here at MIA, where they serve the rental car center and connections to Metro “Snail” mass trans.
The MIA Sky Train, which operates on the roof of American Airline’s Concourse D, from Gates 15-49, was manufactured by Mitsubishi and is part of the Crystal Mover family, as is the IAD system. Both the MIA system and the new APM that serves the rental car lots at Atlanta Hartsfield are married pair units, whereas the IAD units can run as single vehicles. The majority of the airport systems in US airports were built by, and are maintained and operated by Bombardier.
Cool stuff. Two things- It always amazes me how one person on a committee can disrupt progress with a personal tangent like that. Irrational fears have no place in engineering. The second is that “safety professionals” can do a similar thing while using “SAFETY” as a mantra justification for extreme measures. I usually respond to this with a memo proposing that the office workers wear gloves at all times because of the risk of paper cuts and coffee burns and that they wear respirators against the toxic fumes from the photocopier. This usually exposes the lack of clothes on the emperor.
SAFETY=motherhood=apple pie. Yes, use of the SAFETY club can win a lot of arguments. What many people refuse to accept is that there is a cost for safety, and as any other system attribute, there are limits to what can be spent on achieving safety goals. That’s where MIL 883 comes in. An designer with a facility in probability engineering can put to rest a lot of Chicken Littles.
I think you mean MIL-STD-883, which is the overarching safety program for the military.
And not one of you mentioned that totally automated people movers are a Walt Disney legacy. Thank you Uncle Walt.
Dulles was the first airport to experiment with people movers (in 1961) doing away with piers or as are commonly known today concourses. Its old mobile lounges docked at the terminal and planes. These vehicles were manufactured by Chrysler. The lounges could be raised or lowered to facilitate different aircraft types. JFK and Atlanta (old terminal) also later employed these to handled excess traffic.
Houston Intercontinental (now Bush) was second in 1969 with an underground system (similar to the WED people mover at Disney World) linking two terminals and the airport hotel.
Tampa International Airport was the first to employ the modern day automated people mover shuttles in 1971. The original C-100 vehicles were manufactured by Westinghouse Electric. They transported passengers between the central Landside Terminal and four Airside satellites were aircraft parked.
The Westinghouse people mover division was eventually taken over by Bombardier in the 1980s.
Regarding the old “mobile lounges”, you should watch this promotional video from 1958:
Really starts to get relevant around the 5 minute mark. Quite remarkable to consider how the mobile lounges where conceived as a futuristic and comfortable solution then, while now they seem hopelessly anachronistic and uncomfortable.
My grandfather used to work for American Airlines in Dallas from the time Love Field opened in 1958 and when he retired in 1980. He passed away in 1994, but the stories that he has told about Love and the new DFW you could write a book about. He was even at Love the day Kennedy was shot and all the commotion surrounding that. Love debuted two major airport people moving items: Moving Sidewalks and the JetRail. My grandmother, who graduated high school in 1942, had originally started out in life as an air stewardess. She used to fly to Central/South America and the Caribbean until the 1950s when the kids started coming. In addition to being a purser, she was a fully registered nurse, a requirement in those early days of flying.
Thanks for sharing this. It actually seems like a positive that the powers that be went with a proven design, that happened to be made in Japan. Some combination of domestic-content rules and “creative” (bogus) financing means that trains for Boston commuter use are made by clunky multinational consortia. Nothing seems to get bought off the shelf from a plant that’s done it before, so nothing is ever on time or budget.