Atlanta airport to upgrade people-mover

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Anyone who has been stuck in a people-mover train breakdown at the Atlanta airport will likely remember it as a less-than-pleasant travel experience.

Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport hopes to reduce downtime from outages by spending $25 million to upgrade its 34-year-old people-mover known as the Plane Train. The Atlanta City Council this month approved a resolution for the airport contract with Bombardier Transportation Holdings for the work.

The people-mover train, which carries passengers and employees between terminals and concourses, “has been breaking down increasingly over the years,” acknowledged Hartsfield-Jackson airport general manager Miguel Southwell. It has had no major overhaul since it began service in 1980, said director of aviation transportation systems Steven Poerschmann, and is well-beyond its expected operational life-cycle.

The upgrade will include new circuit breakers, monitoring equipment, additional transformers, new disconnect switches for sections of power rail and work to bring the tunnels up to code. It is expected to take two and a half years, with work done at night between 1:30 a.m. and 5 a.m. while the system is normally shut down. Poerschmann said the work should cause minimal impact to operations.

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