As RDU gets more crowded, the airport will reopen a parking lot it closed in 2020
With demand for air travel at record levels, Raleigh-Durham International Airport will reopen a remote parking lot that it closed in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
With 1,000 spaces, the ParkRDU Express parking lot is the smallest of the airport’s three remote lots and the last to reopen after the pandemic. The lot, off International Drive just north of the passenger terminals, is scheduled to reopen Oct. 1.
RDU is busier than ever. In July, nearly 1.4 million passengers passed through the terminals, the most in any month in the airport’s history. RDU is on track to surpass the previous annual record of about 14 million set in 2019.
With the reopening of ParkRDU Express, the airport will have 18,901 parking spaces in its decks and remote lots. The airport’s governing board voted Thursday to begin adding 7,000 spaces to its largest remote lot, Park Economy 3, but those won’t be available until early 2025.
ParkRDU Express differs from the two other remote lots. RDU calls it a “trunk-to-terminal” service, where customers are picked up at their cars, rather than a central pickup point, and driven to the terminals. The shuttle service is designed so that travelers shouldn’t have to wait more than five minutes at their cars before the three- to six-minute drive to the terminals.
Travelers will pay a bit more for the convenience. ParkRDU Express customers who don’t book in advance will pay $16 a day. That’s $4 a day more than the two other remote lots but $4 less than the non-premium spaces in the decks near the terminals.
RDU created the Express lot in the spring of 2019 by reactivating spaces that had not been used since late 2002. At the time the spaces were needed as hundreds of customers a week were being diverted to the economy lots because the decks were full, something that has started to happen this summer as well.
This story was originally published August 18, 2023 at 10:55 AM.
