In the latest saga of construction at Portland International Airport, the connector you used to get from one terminal to another was cut in half and moved.
It's part of the construction project building a new main terminal.
The 700-foot long concourse connector will be used as a bypass to help people move safely around the construction area at the airport’s core. The bypasses will be in place for several years to help travelers easily get to their gates while the construction continues behind insulated walls.
The connector opened on August 22, 2005. It was a stand-alone structure sitting adjacent to the existing terminal building which connected the A/B/C and D/E concourses.
Each segment of building moved weighs 1.8 million pounds, comparable to the weight of 140 of the Oregon Zoo’s Asian Elephant, Samudra.
While about 50 people were a part of the planning effort to safely move the building segments – when the building began inching along, five SPMT’s (Self-Propelled Modular Transporters) were synchronized to a single remote control, driven by one operator who walked alongside the connector with support from spotters all around it.
The second half of the building will move into its new home on the north side of the airport this week.
Source: Port of Portland