Austin-Bergstrom debuts $155M rental car facility

​​​AUSTIN - Austin-Bergstrom International Airport hit another milestone in its evolution, debuting a 1.6 million-sf facility to centralize and expand its rental car operations.

The new five-level, $155 million complex will house vehicle pickup, drop-off, fueling, cleaning and storage services in a single location.

Eleven car rental agencies with more than 300 employees will use the facility.

Austin airport daily car rentals have grown 6 percent annually from 2011 to 2014.

An estimated 3,000 to 5,000 rental vehicles per day will pass through the facility, airport officials said.

The new facility is on the site previously occupied by the airport’s Lot A parking area.

The new garage will house 800 covered public parking spaces on its first floor with the former rental car facility being converted to 900 public parking spaces.

Previously, each rental car company operated separate service centers to clean and refuel cars, sometimes one mile from where customers dropped off vehicles.

Now, the new facility houses centralized areas for vehicles to be prepped, washed and refueled. 

The new facility, officials say, will save as much as 700,000 car trips a year at the airport and lower carbon dioxide emissions by 411.7 tons per year.

Last year, the airport set a record with more than 10.7 million travelers, and it is on pace to top that number this year.

As of August, passenger traffic was at 7.8 million, up 10.5 percent from the same period in 2014.