Sacramento International Airport: Planning for growth

Sacramento International Airport’s $1.3 billion expansion programme will take the Californian gateway to new heights, writes Arthur Shurr.

The 19th century California Gold Rush transformed Sacramento into a major commercial centre, a vital distribution locus, and the capital of California.

Today, the $1.3 billion SMForward expansion programme for Sacramento International Airport (SMF) looks to drive an even greater transformation for the city and greater metropolitan area by increasing access and capacity. And it couldn’t happen at a better time.

SMF air-travel demand is growing. According to the Sacramento County Department of Airports (SCDA), pre-pandemic SMF enjoyed six consecutive years of year-over-year record-breaking passenger growth through 2019. Forecasts show steady passenger growth averaging 4.3% annually through 2041, underscoring the need for expansion. Recent facts support the forecasts.

In 2019, Sacramento International Airport handled 13,172,840 passengers, its best year ever. After the pandemic, in 2022, passenger numbers rebounded to 12.3 million. And 2023 looks to continue that growth with total passengers reaching 9.6 million by the end of September and forecast to land somewhere between 12.5 million and 13 million by the end of the year.

So, post-pandemic, passenger numbers have bounced back quickly and the speed and strength of the recovery has only served to bolster SMF’s growth predictions.

Airlines and route network

Today, 12 major carriers serve SMF including AeroMexico, Air Canada, Alaska, American, Delta, JetBlue, Southwest, and United.

And they continue to expand their route networks out of Sacramento. For example, Delta recently started service to Las Vegas and will add Detroit next year. American looks to begin direct flights to Miami. And Southwest just added daily flights to Eugene, Oregon, and Nashville, Tennessee, and will launch direct services to Orlando in Spring 2024.

Talking about the planned December 21, 2023, of SMF’s first ever non-stop service to Miami operated by American Airlines, SCDA director, Cindy Nichol, said: “We are ecstatic. This new route not only provides our passengers with a convenient and seamless travel experience, but it also opens up a world of possibilities for those looking to explore Florida and beyond to Mexico, the Caribbean and Latin America.”

MIA is, of course, a major hub for international flights, offering quick and easy connections to popular tourist destinations like Cancun, Jamaica, the Bahamas, and the Dominican Republic. In addition, it potentially opens up the cruise ship market for Sacramento via the Port of Miami.

Creating memorable moments

Another reason for implementing such a dynamic development programme as SMF beyond ensuring that the airport is equipped to meet both current and future growth is the desire for its facilities to make a favourable first impression on the millions of new visitors who arrive in Sacramento by air each year.

Nichol explains: “The airport experience is the first impression many people have of Sacramento and Northern California, and often the last as they leave, so we want this experience to be a good one.

“SMForward sets the stage for the airport’s growth and our region’s as a whole over the coming decades.”

Not surprisingly, Robert Ryan, the CEO of Twining – a century-plus old full-service engineering firm with a specialty in materials testing and quality assurance for airports with a long association with SMF – agrees with Nichol about the importance of SMForward.

“It will bring greater economic vitality to the entire Sacramento area. And being able to easily get to the heart of government in the sixth largest economy in the world matters greatly to many people, both inside and outside of California,” enthuses Ryan.

“And an upgraded SMF will also help our entire aviation system, where virtually every airport is connected. Improving SMF makes a big difference for our nation’s airspace.”

But there’s something else that serves as a major impetus for a programme of this size and scope. Sacramentoans love their airport!

“What we’ve heard consistently from our customers is that our community loves SMF,” explains SCDA’s chief administrative officer and planning and development deputy director TJ Chen.

“So, we wanted to deliver a $1.3 billion programme that would improve on the customer experience, while ensuring that our construction activities do not impact operations in any way.

“That’s a lot like building an airplane while we’re trying to fly it. But we take great pride in developing and maintaining a facility that our community truly loves. So, the whole county is very excited about the SMForward programme.”

Key projects of SMFoward

The largest expansion in SMF’s history, SMForward boasts six ambitious projects including a $140 million state-of-the-art pedestrian walkway connecting Terminal B to Concourse B, expansions to both Terminal A and Concourse B (adding gates and new amenities), a new Terminal B parking garage, and a consolidated ground transportation centre.

Launching in summer 2024, the project team expects to finish the programme with a new $390 million consolidated rental car facility by late 2027. Without question the project will be transformative. But there are some truly unusual elements that also inform its conception and design.

“The master plan drives everything. And the goal of the master plan is to make the airport a walkable campus,” explains Chen.

“Right now if you need to go to the rental car facility it’s one of the longest bus rides at our airport. And rental car customers usually travel as families with luggage, so gathering everyone and everything onto a shuttle bus for a long ride is not the experience we want for our customers.”

The new rental car facility will be ideally located close to both terminal buildings, along with the ground transportation centre. With the new configuration, Chen posits that passengers can reach their ground transportation with “less than a five-minute walk.” While primary, customer convenience is not the only feature of SMForward.

Funding the upgrade

“No local taxpayer dollars will be used to pay for SMForward,” notes SCDA’s deputy director for finance and administration, Chris Wimsatt. “Some federal funds will be used from the new bipartisan infrastructure law, but that will only pay for a minor portion of it.

“Ultimately, we’re using a combination of federal and state grants, municipal bonds issued by the airport, and users fees. While that may sound typical for many airports, we actually got pretty creative in designing our funding scheme.”

Like many US airports, airline fees will pay for a significant portion of the programme and revenue from parking will “pay for the lion’s share of the parking facility.” But for much of the rest, Wimsatt and his team got creative. Again, like many airports, Wimsatt looked to use rental car revenue – the customer facility charge (CFC) levied on all renters to fund the new rental car facility. But timing presented a snag. Wimsatt explains.

He says: “First, we chose not to charge the maximum CFC. But the issue was that according to Californian law, our ability to leverage CFC funding for the rental car facility will sunset at the end of this year if we don’t have the financing in place already. So, we’d have to sell bonds to keep collecting the CFC specifically to build our rental car facility. But we didn’t want to sell bonds.

“So, we had three options: 1) find other financing, 2) issue placeholder bonds to preserve CFC use and then issue new bonds later, or 3) change state law. We went for option 3.”

Wimsatt credits SMF’s “partners and champions” in the state legislature for crafting Assembly Bill 534 that will remove the sunset component entirely, solving the issue for SMF, as well as every other California airport.

He is also quick to acknowledge that legislators showed great support for SMForward, some of the reasons including the fact that it will make the airport a greener gateway and provide new electric vehicle infrastructure. But Wimsatt and his team didn’t stop there.

He explains that SMF is among the first group of airports to pursue TIFIA (Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act) funding specifically for an airport project, instead of an intermodal project connecting to the airport.

And while TIFIA use federalises procurement, that presented little challenge to the SMF team, as they’re already using federal funds elsewhere and California procurement standards tend to be stricter than most other jurisdictions in terms of minority business representation, reporting, etc.

Pioneering project

Given its unique features, yet broad procedural transferability, SMForward not only serves as an essential upgrade, but also as a compelling model for other US airports.

Twining’s Ryan, who is also a pilot and has landed twin-engine turboprop aicraft at the airport for more than four decades, notes: “Being state of the art is key to attracting business. I’ve no doubt that SMForward is a cutting-edge investment that will bring great returns to the region for decades.

“As a pilot, and as an expert in materials testing/quality assurance, the core mission at my firm is public safety. And that means dotting all of the I’s and crossing all of the T’s in everything we do all of the time. When you examine SMForward, it’s abundantly clear that TJ Chen and Chris Wimsatt have meticulously put together a stunning upgrade programme that also provides an incredibly useful paradigm for other airports.”

Ryan’s observation about Chen and Wimsatt’s effort is astute. Chen reports that each SMForward project will be contracted out separately, unlike many programmes that bundle such projects together. Though separation creates considerably more work, Chen and his team want to personally ensure that not only is everything done correctly, but also that minority, women, local, small, and disadvantaged business truly do have fair access to SMForward contracts.

In the 1840s, the California Gold Rush transformed Sacramento, putting it on a path to its vital importance today. The Sacramento Department of Airports looks to do the exact same thing with their $1.3 billion SMForward transformation of Sacramento International Airport.

About the author

Arthur Schurr is a New York-based freelance writer who reports on transportation infrastructure.