Phoenix officials unveiled their final proposal Wednesday on what to charge ground transportation companies that drop off and pick up passengers at Sky Harbor Airport, and those cost increases could be passed along to riders.
The fees would apply to services like Super Shuttle, Uber and Lyft, as well as taxis and limousines. Some of these companies are being asked to pay for the first time for each airport trip they make.
“There has been an imbalance for a number of years,” Assistant Aviation Director Chad Makovsky said. “Some of our providers are subsidizing the operations of other commercial ground transportation, and in fact, the airport is subsidizing significantly this operation.”
Airport officials also want to increase total ground transportation revenues from $6 million to $10 million annually, which would be mostly paid for with the per-trip fees, which range from $4 to $11 depending on each vehicle's seating capacity.
The number of trips would be calculated with a small transponder window sticker in the cars and shuttles or by capturing data through the companies’ GPS dispatching systems.
The owner of Blue Sky, an off-site airport parking lot, said the shuttle trip fees could not be passed along to his clientele because his price wouldn’t be competitive anymore.
“Based on the number of trips we do to the airport, that would cost us $400,000 per year, which is catastrophic,” Blue Sky owner Dave Warren said. “We couldn’t afford it. We'd go out of business.”
Read full Airport Ground Transportation Fee Proposal here.
If approved by the Phoenix City Council, the proposal could take effect in January of 2017.
