I would have thought it was the airport that decided to go down the £1 barrier route although who stumped up the money and how it is split I guess we will never know.
Other prices have come down like the free 1 hour parking in the mid term, which is only £2 if a car stays for up to 2 hours. But if too many passengers start to be dropped off in the car park then this will also create its own problems, as the bus can only cope with around maybe 15 cars worth of passengers at say 3 passengers per car. Well 15 cars can shoot through the tunnel in less than a minute so is this really the fix the airport is hoping for?
With a single bus running between various stops in the car park and the terminal a 10 minute service is the best that can be hoped for unless a second bus is put on the route. With a morning traffic jam in the tunnel this 10 minute service is no doubt often late just when it is needed most.
Got to say this year’s problems are different from the issues the airport has had over the last few years. Before the single entry and exit barrier together with cars parking up while their drivers waited for passengers would cause congestion during peak periods through out the day. Now it only seems to affect the morning peak while the other 22 hours of the day the roads seem fine. This peak is not helped by the fact that cars heading for the drop off zone, the short term car park and the staff car park all use the same exit point now on the former roundabout.
Apart from reversing the flow of traffic into the drop off area, which most people think would fix all issues I can’t see what else would help. No doubt the airport must have considered this and must have a very good reason not to go down this path but with barriers and number plate readers now in and working reversing the traffic flow has now got much more expensive if they go down this path.
The bottom line is that there is no point in building new aprons so that more aircraft can be based at Luton or even extending the terminal because the road layout in the central area can’t cope now so the airport has effectively reached or gone beyond capacity.