Even with fewer travelers venturing out because of COVID-19, the journey to and from the airport and the car rental center can be difficult. Picking up your rental can take almost as long as a short flight.
I was unhappily reminded of that the other day at the Dallas/Fort-Worth International Airport CRACF.
What is a CRACF? Think lots of rental cars. It’s short for Consolidated Rent-A-Car Facility.
My journey via shuttle bus from the rental facility to the airport terminal took 31 minutes. The bus wait was 20 minutes, and loading added another six minutes. The actual ride was five minutes. My flight to San Antonio was only 44 minutes.
Over the last decade or so, CRACF has become a buzzword among airport officials.
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Airports get to charge rent to the car rental companies, something they can’t do when each company has its own off-site lot.
The PR spin from airports is that they are getting rental car shuttles off the road, relieving traffic. I am all for clean air and less traffic.
The problem is the long shuttle waits — from transportation companies that generally hold exclusive agreements to provide service between the CRACFs and terminals.
My experience at various airports is that the lack of a CRACF is good news. With competing car rental companies — and no central facility housing them — each one’s vans arrive every few minutes or so.
Avis knows that if it doesn’t have enough buses, National or Hertz is going to steal their lunch. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned Hertz, since they are in bankruptcy, but you get the picture.
But creating a monopoly for one shuttle company is a recipe for slow service.
It’s just the nature of a monopoly — there’s not much incentive to provide good service.
Travelers, however, can fight back in some cases. If they’re flying to the Dallas area, passengers can fly to Love Field on Southwest. At the smaller Love Field, compared to D/FW, the competing rental car vans are usually waiting for you for the four-minute trip to the rental center.
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Some airports including Orlando International in Florida, Austin Bergstrom International and San Antonio International have conveniently placed their car rental centers across the street from the terminal.
In those cases, the trip to the car rental center is as fast as you can walk or run. The airports are actually improving the rental car experience while collecting rent from car rental companies.
But be careful — changes do occur. At Tampa International Airport in Florida, the rental car center was across the street from the terminal. In the name of progress, it’s now a train ride away, adding another 10 minutes to get your rental car.
I may also may have bad timing. The bus to Terminal C at D/FW pulled out just as I entered the bus platform during my recent trip.
When the next bus finally arrived, I asked: Why so long?
The driver maintained that buses ran every five minutes and that it was all controlled by a dispatcher with GPS who made sure there was never a long wait.
He could not explain my 20-minute wait. It was an unexplained mystery of life! But this same thing has happened to me before at the D/FW car rental facility and numerous others.
In fact, at other CRACF facilities, my experiences have been worse.
Before the pandemic, I encountered delays numerous times at McCarren International Airport in Las Vegas, waiting for the shuttle to the car rental center.
Long lines resulted in waits as long as 30 minutes in the Las Vegas heat. Add another seven minutes to load the bus and ten more minutes for the trip to the rental facility. I began to wonder why an Uber did not enter my mind.
My worse CRACF experience was several years back at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.
It was 5:30 a.m. and my flight was at 7:15 a.m. The wait for the bus was more than 30 minutes. About 40 other travelers and I kept hoping the shuttle would arrive soon. When the bus finally came, the ride to the car rental center took 10 minutes in a standing-room-only vehicle.
I made my flight, but just barely.
The absolute worst place to rent a car at a U.S. airport is Miami International Airport. The shuttle bus is not to blame because there is no bus.
Instead, it’s a long walk of 10 to 15 minutes on endless moving walkways. It’s easy to get lost. This has happened to me several times.
Eventually, you end up at a train station for the trip to the consolidated car rental facility. With the wait for the train, you can easily add another 15 minutes to your journey to the CRACF.
One way to fight back is to learn the secrets of an airport you use a lot.
At D/FW, while I was waiting 20 minutes for my shuttle bus to Terminal C, two successive buses marked terminal A appeared.
What I realized later was that there is an internal train that connects all the terminals at D/FW and runs every few minutes. All I had to do was jump on the Terminal A bus and then grab the internal train.
If I had thought ahead, I would have gotten to my gate sooner!
Randy Diamond covers tourism and the travel industry. To read more from Randy, become a subscriber. randy.diamond@express-news.net
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August 18, 2020 at 06:00PM
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Wary Traveler: Car rental nightmares - San Antonio Express-News
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