By Tom Webb

St. Paul Pioneer Press

MINNEAPOLIS — The main terminal at MSP airport will soon open another parking ramp, which is good news for frustrated travelers sometimes unable to find a spot there.

Unlike the existing color-coded ramps, the new public parking opening in January isn’t attached to the main terminal. It will require a short shuttle ride. But it will cost $8 a day less than the connected ramps.

“In January, we’re planning to convert what had been an employee ramp (for Delta Air Lines) into a park-and-ride,” Patrick Hogan, spokesman for Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, said Thursday. “We can accommodate about 1,400 people in that ramp.”

Initially, airport officials intended to call it the Maroon Ramp. But “maroon” turned out to be a fraught name for satellite parking.

So instead, it’ll be called the Quick Ride Ramp, located along Hwy. 5.

Already, MSP’s main terminal has 16,000 public parking spots, but that’s still not enough to meet demand that’s been growing by 7 percent a year. That growth has sent airport officials scrambling and worked the nerves of weekday travelers.

“We have 40 to 50 days a year — it’s always Tuesday and Wednesday — when the ramps fill to capacity at Terminal 1,” Hogan said.

That happened earlier this week, when the existing ramps at the main terminal were completely full. Travelers were redirected to available space at the smaller Terminal 2, and told to catch the light rail line back to the main terminal for their flights.

That “can create stress and contribute to missed flights,” an airport memo concedes.

Plus, MSP doesn’t want a reputation as an uncertain parking provider, leading people to private, off-site ramps; parking fees are the airport’s single largest source of revenue — $80 million a year.

The new Quick Ride Ramp sits alongside Hwy. 5, and passengers will need to enter via Post Road, not from the main entrance to the airport. Shuttle buses will take people to and from the main terminal. The two-story ramp was built for Northwest Airlines, and is now owned by the Metropolitan Airports Commission.

The Quick Ride Ramp is only one of several parking changes coming to MSP.

For the next 18 months, the main terminal will lose 550 rooftop parking spots while a huge solar array is installed atop its ramps. Details on that project will be announced next month.

And, parking rates are going up. Starting Jan. 1, 2015, the daily rate for long-term parking at the main terminal will rise from $22 to $24 a day. (It’s $2 less if passengers pay with credit cards using ePark).