If you visit the Salt Lake City International Airport these days, you're likely to find a "Lot Full" sign blocking the main entrance to the short-term parking lot.
Airport officials aren't quite sure why the lot seems to be filling up more frequently than it used to, but they do admit the problem is growing.
"It has been happening a little more recently," Salt Lake City Department of Airports spokeswoman Barbara Gann said.
Maybe it's the cold weather making people more likely to pay the $19 per day for short-term parking than the $6 daily rate for the more distant and uncovered long-term parking.
It could be that Wednesday and Thursday have become peak travel days for business travelers — both those who are arriving home from an extended business weekend and those who are just leaving for one.
Also, Wednesday is the biggest travel day for LDS missionaries. They often come with a large contingency of well-wishers who use short-term parking while seeing them off, Gann said.
Whatever the reason, airport managers have a new tool they hope will reduce congestion in the short-term parking lot and eliminate all those "Lot Full" signs.
The tool: a brand new "park and wait" lot that allows those picking up passengers to forsake the short-term lot and instead have free parking while they wait to shuttle friends and family from the airport. The lot is the latest finished piece of the airport's current land-side development project, which should be completely finished in November 2006.
The new park-and-wait lot has 100 stalls and is set up in prime position just southeast of the terminal gates as drivers enter the airport. Drivers can park in the lot and wait until their friend or relative's flight arrives.
Large electronic boards tell the drivers when flights arrive. The boards also inform whether flights are on time or delayed and when their passengers are ready for pickup. Usually it takes passengers some 20 minutes to deplane and pick up their carry-on luggage before they are ready to be picked up at the curb. The board takes this 20-minute lag time into account before telling drivers that their passengers are ready and waiting.
Drivers can then use the new pickup lanes on the left side of the airport boulevard. The right lanes are now reserved only for people who are dropping passengers off.
The whole pickup system is designed to maximize convenience, eliminate congestion and hopefully free up stalls in the short-term parking lot.
The airport's long-term plan includes designs to renovate the short-term parking structure into a larger facility, but such a move is a decade or two in the future and will largely depend on the continued success of the city's airlines.
"For the time being, short term is adequate for what we use it for despite these occasional full moments," Gann said.
These days the new park-and-wait lot is fairly empty, with a half dozen or so cars using it at any time. But land-side construction engineer Bob Bailey predicts that when another permanent sign is erected and the word spreads the lot will be jammed.
"Once we get the other two signs up, this lot will be full to capacity," he said.
Erin Whitlow, a New York transplant who recently moved to Utah, said she has been using the new lot regularly since it opened late last month. The old park-and-wait lot was just 30 stalls and was inconveniently located on the other side of the airport.
"I'm at this airport a lot and I was really surprised how close they got (the lot) to the airport terminals," she said.
The land-side construction project, even though it isn't completely finished, has positioned the airport to be a model of convenience, Gann said. It's just a matter of getting people to use the airport as designed, she said.
Airport operations superintendent David Korzep noted other airports are looking at Salt Lake City's new design as a template.
"We've had quite a bit of interest in people wanting to see how we do things," he said.
E-mail: bsnyder@desnews.com