I was flying from Tampa to Portland, Oregon to see my family there, so I thought I would tryout the new train from the Economy Parking Garage. The Econo parking is about one mile from the main terminal at the Tampa International Airport. The advantage to parking there, is that it only costs $10 a day compared with $22 for the short term and $18 for the long term garage. That is a big savings if you are going to be gone for 5 to 10 days! So, I parked my car and took a picture of the level I was on. I had to then go down to the first level.
I read this sign and had to walk a little out of the way to get to the moving sidewalk.
So, I got on the moving sidewalk to see where it would take me. As it was 5 am there weren’t any other people around.
When I cam to the end I had to walk over to another set of elevators that had a sign that said to go to level 4, so up I went.
I got up to the level 4 lobby area to wait for the next train. I had just missed one, but the next one came about 3 minutes later.
I got on for the ride to the terminal. There was very limited seating as you can see. The ride lasted about three minutes and we arrived at the Eastern side of the main terminal.
I exited into another lobby area that was very big and had some artwork hanging in the middle.
I watched the train as it left the station to go back to the Economy Parking garage.
I then had to go down some escalators to the main terminal area. It brings you onto the arriving and departing gates floor. This is ok if you are not checking any bags. If you are checking bags, you need to take another elevator down to that floor.
Here is a picture from the main terminal looking back towards the lobby area for the train. While the train was very efficient, it seems there were too many ups and downs on elevators and escalators. It seems to me they could have eliminated one or two of those. All in all I will use the train again, as it saves me a lot of money for just a little bit oh hassle. Happy travels!
