Hands free to the airport? In the U.S. and Canada, there's potential for rail station remote luggage check-in. Europe and Asia are already there

Railway Age, Jan, 2004 by Chris Cook

It's 9:00 a.m. You've checked out of your hotel room, facing another eight hours of meetings in a distant building. What to do with your luggage? Today, you'd probably check your luggage with the hotel bell captain and return to retrieve it in the afternoon.

Tomorrow, you could well visit an off-airport airline check-in counter--in your hotel, at your conference center, or at a nearby rail station. Your luggage would be handed over and tagged to your final airport. You'd be given a boarding pass with your seat assignment and, the next time you'd sec your luggage would be in the evening when you climb off of your final flight.

If you do not believe it's possible to travel to the airport hands free, you have not travelled through some of the world's most up-to-date airports. Remote check in of luggage is an idea whose time has come, but has been around for a while.

All of this began 40 years ago with London's Gatwick Express, and really took off about five years ago with the Lon don Heathrow Express and Airport Express Hong Kong.

Heathrow Express's 16-mile super rapid transit line connects London's Paddington Station with all of Heathrow's terminals. Airport Express Hong Kong connects central Hong Kong and the business district of Kowloon with the new airport at Check Lap Kok. To better serve their passengers in both cities, the airlines opened check-in counters at downtown rail stations. At Paddington, initially only passengers without checked baggage were accommodated. As evolution dictates, the next improvement was to ban die checked baggage--and both of these rail systems use the same handling technology. This was quite a bold step.

Checked bags receive an ordinary bar-coded destination tag at the downtown station. These bar-codes are scanned as the bags are loaded into secure containers. The bar-code on the container is scanned as the container is loaded into a secure baggage compartment on a regular 15-minute-headway train. Once at the airport, the reverse happens. The bags are put into the airport's sortation system, screened, and treated as though they were airline transfer bags.

One of the newest such services is at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The KLIA Ekspres trip time between Kuala Lumpur International Airport and KL Sentral takes only 28 minutes. Trains depart every fifteen minutes, round-the clock, seven days a week.

If all this seems complicated, it is not. It's operationally robust and secure. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has approved the procedure for U.S. airlines. At both London Heathrow and London Gatwick, that approval is in erect today, two years after 9/11.

On the European Continent, Madrid's Metro has evolved a bit further. At the Metro station serving the central once district, you can check your bags and receive your boarding pass. You may travel to the airport free, flashing your boarding pass to the Metro gate attendant. The bar-coded baggage is handled in a manner similar to that of Heathrow--even the containers are of the same design.

Similar arrangements exist at Leipzig-Halle, Germany, and in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Travellers using Swiss Railways to fly out of Zurich's Kloten airport also know the convenience of checking bulky skis at distant railway stations.

So where does this leave the U.S.? There are aspirations for remote check-in at a number of locations. These are focused on airports with rail connections. These rail connections may be made by light rail, rapid transit, commuter rail, even Amtrak. There is a great need to encourage air passengers to use these public transportation services. Downtown check in benefits the passenger by eliminating the need to drag luggage to the air port. Rail operators gain another source of revenue and use of facilities during the off-peak period. Finally, airports can process the baggage during slack times when equipment and employees are not so busy.

Beyond making travel more convenient for airline passengers, why go through all this effort? In a real sense, it's economics. Airline travel is projected to double by 2015. The events of 9/11, and subsequent security initiatives, did put a damper on air travel, but the growth curve has restarted. Airports are stretched, trying to lengthen runways into the surrounding countryside.

Terminal buildings are crowded, with serpentine check-in lines impeding walking. Large areas of existing terminal space have been lost. This is because of the sudden need to shoe-horn in massive pieces of screening equipment into buildings that were never designed to accommodate them. Available research shows that, if there is a solution to the surface baggage transportation problem, airline passengers are much more likely to use public transit to travel to the airport.

As remote check-in becomes possible in the U.S., the shortened check in lines will start at downtown or suburban rail stations. Luggage checked in at 9 a.m. for a 5 p.m. departure may bc security checked during the day, when demand for screening equipment is reduced. The rail station check-in counters may be used by multiple airlines at different times of the day. This reduces airline investment and airport space rental payments--and frees up space for retail at airports.