Tampa International Airport welcomed some big changes to its Red Side on Monday with a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the completion its new Red Express Curbsides.
Community partners joined Airport officials to mark the opening this week of the building and traffic lanes, which are on the north side of the Airport’s Main Terminal building. While crews are finishing some minor work on the area this month, the Red Express building will open to the traveling public at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, Aug. 12.
The new Curbs mirror TPA’s award-winning Blue Express Curbsides and allow travelers who are not checking bags and have electronic boarding passes to skip the Ticketing level when departing and the Baggage Claim level when arriving. This innovative feature was a first-of-its-kind experience at a U.S. airport when the Blue Express Curbsides first opened in November 2021, and has proven popular with TPA’s travelers.
“Less than four years after the Blue Express curbs opened, we see that about half of our guests flying on Blue Side airlines use them,” Airport CEO Michael Stephens said. “Now we will be offering the same innovation and efficiency to our travelers on the Red Side, with this bright, clean and thoroughly modern building.”
The Red Express project includes four additional Arrivals lanes and four additional Departures lanes to ease traffic congestion, doubling the number of Express lanes from eight to 16. The Red Express Curbs will serve passengers using airlines on the the Airport’s Red Side. These include Air Canada, Alaska Airlines, Avelo Airlines, Breeze Airways, British Airways, Discover Airlines, Edelweiss Air, Frontier, Southwest Airlines, Spirit Airlines, Sun Country Airlines and WestJet.
The Curbs are part of an expansion that adds more than 65,000 square feet of space to the facility, including a larger transfer level on the third floor of the Main Terminal and a shuttle lobby for the future Airside D. The new space includes dynamic public art installations by renowned artists Claudia Comte, Jason Bruges and Janaina Tschape.Construction on the Red Side first required the removal of the Airport’s 1970s-era Administration Building before adding the new lanes and building.
Signage around the Airport will now include Red Express to direct drivers to choose either the Express lanes or standard, full-service lanes when dropping off or picking up. Travelers using ride-sharing services like Uber or Lyft can choose Red Express as a pick-up or drop-off point in addition to the Blue Express, depending on their location.
“The thought that has gone into this project, not just from the design standpoint but from the concept of the Express Curbs, going back to the planning stages, is just amazing,” TPA Chief Development Officer Smitha Radhakrishnan said. “All you have to do is look around and you see the impeccable execution of that very concept, and to realize that our passengers are going to use this amenity and appreciate it for decades to come.”
The completion of this project marks the end of construction for Phase 2 of the Airport’s three-phase Master Plan, a blueprint for managing growth at TPA that was conceived in 2012. Other Phase 2 projects that have been completed include the Airport’s new Central Utility Plant and SkyCenter One office complex.
Phase 3 is the construction of the 16-gate Airside D, which broke ground in December and is scheduled to open to the public in late 2028.
The project encompassing the Red Express building and its traffic lanes, an expanded walkway to the Airport Marriott hotel and the shuttle station cost $109 million. Hensel Phelps and HNTB are the design-build team for both the Red and Blue Express Curbsides, and are also the design-builders for Airside D.
