The Oakland Airport Connector, for owner San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District, is a fixed, elevated guideway that carries an automated people mover, which provides a 3.2-mile connection between the Oakland Coliseum BART and Amtrak station and the Oakland International Airport.

Prior to construction, travelers who rode BART from cities in the East Bay to the Oakland Airport had to exit the train at the Coliseum Station and take a bus or taxi to the airport.

Construction included installation of 136 cast-in-place columns and bent caps, as well as related utility relocation and a 200-foot cut-and-cover tunnel, plus installation of a prefabricated tubular steel guideway on which the trains will run. Much of the work took place adjacent to urban roadways in Oakland.

Turner Construction will build the platform portion of the project’s two new stations, as well as the central maintenance and control facility, which has the capacity to become a third station in the future. The driverless trains will depart every four to five minutes, with one train running in each direction and a total ride time of 8.5 minutes.

Originally designed to serve between seven and eight million passengers annually, the airport’s two terminals served nearly 14.6 million passengers in 2007.