New curbside express entrance opens at TPA

Tampa International Airport celebrated the grand opening of its new Red Express Curbsides building on Monday, an innovative new entrance for passengers hoping to skip the crowds.

The Red Express Curbsides building mirrors the award-winning Blue Express Curbsides, which opened to the public in November 2021 as a way to ease traffic congestion and speed up the boarding process for passengers with electronic tickets and no checked bags. 

The $109 million project includes four additional arrivals lanes and four additional departures lanes inside a new express curbside building.

The new express curbsides entrance opens to the public Tuesday, Aug. 12 and is located on the opposite end of the airport’s Main Terminal building from the Blue Express Curbsides.

The new drop-offs allow travelers to skip the ticketing and baggage check lines by walking from their car directly to the landside terminal gates on the third floor. The new entrances also allow passengers to bypass baggage claim upon arrival.

The project also includes an expanded walkway to the Airport Marriott and a shuttle station for the airport's upcoming Airside D Terminal.

The Red Express Curbsides building will also be home to three new art installations.

“Cloud Ascent,” by London-based artist Jason Bruges, is meant to give passengers riding the escalator into the main Terminal the feeling of ascending through clouds, the artist says in a statement from the airport. The display consists of three-dimensional surfaces made from opacity-changing composite liquid crystal materials that “simulate the dynamic cloud formations and weather patterns of the skies above,” the statement says. 

Roughly 40% of the approximately 25 million passengers who fly through TPA each year do not check bags, the airport says. By 2037, passenger volume is expected to increase to 35 million. 

The Red Express Curbsides’ completion marks the end of construction efforts for Phase 2 of the airport’s three-phase master plan for managing growth. The final project will be the construction of a new 16-gate, $1.5 billion Airside D Terminal scheduled to open in 2028.