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Driving friends or family to the airport has always been the ultimate, tearful gesture of love or friendship.
It’s the full-on Love Actually moment, bundling suitcases out of the car and onto the footpath and then leaning in for the last hug goodbye. Picking up arriving loved ones brings joyful reunions.
But free hellos and goodbyes are about to become more difficult as Melbourne Airport prepares to end kerbside pick-ups and drop-offs at the doors of terminals.
The new pick-up and drop-off zone under construction in the car park area across the pedestrian bridge from terminal 3 will be free for now, but there are no guarantees about the future. The drop-off and pick-up for terminal 4 has already been shunted into the first floor of a multistorey car park.
Pressed on whether there would be charges in the future for picking up and dropping off, a Melbourne Airport spokesman did not rule this out, saying “the new pick-up and drop-off zones will be free”.
We know how this story ends. At Manchester Airport in Britain it costs £5 ($9.40) for a five-minute drop-off, and one reader reports “they have wardens patrolling all the surrounding roads to fine anyone trying to drop off outside the designated zone”.
Melbourne Airport’s move is one way it can continue its favourite pastime: gouging us on everything.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s latest airport monitoring report, published in March, confirmed the scale of this operation, with Melbourne Airport already pocketing $20.37 per passenger via fees billed as “aeronautical services” on every ticket.
The airport has fought hard for years against construction of an airport train line, which is now scheduled to open in the early 2030s.
It demanded an underground train line rather than a cheaper and easier-to-build above-ground option, finally giving in two years ago but not before negotiating compensation for acquisition of part of its land for the rail link.
It’s hard not to suspect that the millions of dollars in parking fees the airport rakes in each year might just have something to do with its opposition to the long-promised airport train. After all, Melbourne Airport is not really an airport business; it’s a parking business.
Parking by the terminal for 30 minutes to one hour costs $17, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, while staying two to three days in the “value” car park, from where you have to catch a bus to the airport, costs $36.82.
The airport’s operating profit for car parking services was $101.3 million last financial year. It has a staggering 24,690 parking spaces and brings in $6902 for each overpriced rectangle of asphalt.
“The regulatory oversight applied to the major airports is limited for operators of monopoly
infrastructure,” the ACCC reports.
Indeed.
If you decide to catch an Uber or taxi to get there instead, the airport takes a clip of that with a fee of $5.64 on each Uber fare and $5.15 for taxis.
You also have to run the gauntlet of potentially getting scammed or having taxi or Uber drivers just flat out refuse to take you.
And now that you face being dropped off up to 380 metres from the terminal from later this year you’ll probably need a luggage trolley. That will be another $5 for the privilege of using it for five minutes to carry your luggage.
There is the option of SkyBus ($24.90 one way) or a public bus, but the public bus stop is hidden far away from the main terminals’ entry, on the ground floor of the T4 car park, and there is no direct public bus route into the CBD. Instead, you have to change at Airport West, Sunbury, Roxburgh Park, Epping or Greensborough.
They couldn’t make it more inconvenient if they tried.
Somewhat unbelievably, Melbourne Airport was this year ranked the best airport in Australia and 21st on the world stage. The reality is that it’s an international embarrassment.
Imagine travellers arriving from Singapore’s Changi airport with its indoor waterfall or Hong Kong’s airport with its direct rail connection and option to check in your bags in the CBD. Arriving here they find a $101 million car parking operation.
Melbourne Airport claims the new pick-up and drop-off zone will reduce congestion around the airport and boost its capacity to handle an expected 68 million passengers by 2038.
What it will do for those of us who use the airport, is make the free option of picking up and dropping off someone just that bit more inconvenient.
Rideshare vehicles and taxis will still be able to pick up at the airport forecourt, funnelling more people into using them rather than relying on friends and family. It’s perhaps unsurprising then that Uber and 13cabs are backing the redesign.
Driving friends and family to or from the airport isn’t just a gesture of love, it’s also the only practical way to cheaply access the airport.
We deserve a world-class gateway to Melbourne, not a world-class car park.
Cara Waters is the city editor for The Age.
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