All change for airport and station

10:02am Tuesday 13th November 2007

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NEW construction projects and hi-tech innovations are planned to speed passengers through Southampton Airport and its adjoining railway station.

Train departure information is to be electronically displayed in the airport's arrivals hall and there are hopes that air passengers will soon be able to buy rail tickets from machines in the airport terminal.

A station footbridge that can be negotiated by wheelchair also looks set to be built at last.

South West Trains says that it expects the new bridge, equipped with a lift at each end, to be finished early in 2009.

SWT and the airport both want to overcome technical barriers and sell combined rail-flight tickets.

The ambitious plans emerged at a meeting of Southampton Airport Consultative Committee.

There were calls for Parkway' to be dropped from the airport station name because it was said to be confusing. Phil Dominey, representing SWT, said that the company would be making a new planning application for a multi-storey station car park, differing slightly from a scheme for which it already had conditional approval.

He said that the idea was to make the airport and the station into one product. He said: "It's 99 steps from train to airport. That's better than any other airport in Europe."

Dave Lees, the airport's planning director, said that work was already under way to add three extra check-in desks in the concourse and to extend the behind-the-scenes baggage area.

Work has also started on a £m car rental building which, when completed in January, would enable the removal of car rental desks from the concourse.