At the beginning of December 2013, the new terminal at Pulkovo Airport began to receive its first passengers. This action is carried out in test mode and in the future it is planned to gradually transfer flights from existing terminals of St. Petersburg Airport.
In the new Pulkovo-1 terminal, parking is designed for 2,500 cars, divided into paid and free, indoor and outdoor. In addition, the airport has many cafes, shops, a hotel and a business center.
Architectural and design solution
This building was built quite quickly - it took about three years. In November 2010, Vladimir Putin took part in laying the first pile in the foundation of a new airport complex.
The general contractor who carried out the construction was a consortium called IC / Astaldi. He is an Italian-Turkish company.
The new Pulkovo-1 terminal in St. Petersburg has a large area, which exceeds the territory of the existing terminal complexes by two and a half times.
The design of the interior decoration and the exterior of the building was taken up by the English architectural company Grimshaw Architects. The idea of the design was to reflect the features of the St. Petersburg architectural style and the natural beauties of this area.
Indeed, entering the new terminal and looking around, you can catch yourself thinking that its design is largely in line with the features of the city. Here are the motifs of the ceremonial halls of the famous Hermitage, and the domes of magnificent cathedrals, churches of the city.
And the external design is also executed in an interesting way. The golden roof of the building is a symbol of the bright lights of the city skyline, and the wavy ceiling inside the building resembles the reflection of the Neva.
Internal review of the new terminal
Pulkovo-1 Airport is the largest of all buildings in this complex, it is equipped with one hundred and ten passport control booths, has eighty-eight check-in desks and seven baggage claim tapes. There are a sufficient number of terapraps, forty-five elevators and seventeen escalators.
There will be no obstacles for people with disabilities in the new Pulkovo-1 terminal, since all rooms and rooms in the building are fully equipped for a barrier-free environment, which allows you to comfortably stay and move around the territory.
A huge area of the building is given over to the catering and retail. It housed a large number of bars, restaurants, cafes of Russian and world food chains.
We decided to open for the first time in Russia a McDonald's fast food restaurant on the territory of the terminal.
Nearly 2,000 square meters were allocated for duty free shops Duty Free, managed by one of the first global operators, The Nuance Group, which first entered the Russian market.
Overview of adjacent buildings
In addition to the large number of services that can be obtained inside the terminal building, developers and architects thought about the external infrastructure.
For the convenience of future passengers and the newly arrived guests of the Northern capital, a new four-star hotel called Park Inn by Radisson was built on the forecourt of the terminal.
The hotel has two hundred and fifteen comfortable rooms, with a beautiful concise design and good service.
In addition to the hotel, a business center and parking spaces are located in the nearby area.
Paid parking areas
Parking in the new Pulkovo-1 terminal is also present and is a multi-level building with open and closed parking.
The total number of cars that can accommodate this complex is 2,860 units.
Also, these parking spaces are divided into paid and free.
Paid parking lots in the new Pulkovo-1 terminal are equipped with video surveillance and barriers; their work mode is round-the-clock. These parking lots have indoor and outdoor parking spaces.
Covered parking, which is designated as P1, accommodates five hundred and sixty cars and is located near the entrance to Terminal 1, or rather a few minutes walk from it.
Open-air car parks for short stays are designated P2 and P3, designed for 232 and 157 cars, respectively. The first twenty minutes of the car in such a parking lot is not paid.
These parking lots are a little further than indoor parking, about a seven-minute walk from Pulkovo-1 terminal.
Long-term open parking in the new Pulkovo-1 (P4) terminal holds up to 1,222 cars and is located further than all other types of parking. In order to get to the parking lot P4, you need to spend about ten minutes.
Every fifteen minutes, a shuttle bus runs between the parking lot and Terminal 1, which is free of charge.
Unlike parking lots P2 and P3, parking lots P1 and P4 are charged from the moment the vehicle enters. A free shuttle bus (shuttle) runs between the P4 long-term parking lot and the terminal every 15 minutes.
Free parking
This type of parking for cars is designated as P7 and does not have a security system.
P7 is located at the farthest distance from Pulkovo Airport, walking from the terminal to a car parked in this parking lot takes about twelve minutes. The number of cars for which free parking is designed is 280 pieces.
Forced innovations
During the design and construction of the parking lot for the new Pulkovo-1 airport terminal, traffic requirements and the experience of foreign colleagues in the construction of airports in the largest cities of Europe were taken into account. They organized free access to terminal buildings for the possibility of disembarkation and embarkation of people.
But in St. Petersburg, this experiment did not take root due to a violation of traffic rules by car owners. Very often people left their cars at the station building for a long time, which contributed to traffic jams near the entrance to the terminals.
In this regard, the management decided to equip the entrance and exit areas, as well as the sectors of the terminal with barriers, which record the amount of time the car stays at the airport terminal, and impose restrictions on the period of stay of the car, which is no more than fifteen minutes.