Full speed ahead

Passengers have likely noticed one of the reasons: Planes at Logan are already fuller. The number of passengers flying in and out of the airport has held relatively steady in the past decade, at about 26 million each year, yet the number of flights has actually decreased by about 25 percent over the same period. “When fuel was cheaper,” Kinton says, “it wasn’t uncommon to have airplanes flying around half-full. Given the economic constraints today, they need to fly at three-quarters capacity.”

The second reason will be a new airport-use fee policy designed to counter passengers’ tendency to prefer certain flight times. Brelis says Logan was the country’s first major airport to make plans for this kind of program, which aims to turn today’s dramatic traffic peaks and valleys into gently rolling hills by charging airlines higher fees for the most popular travel times. “Just because everybody wants to fly at 7 a.m. and come home at 5 that afternoon doesn’t mean they’ll be able to,” Kinton says. The airport could handle a lot more traffic in the middle of the night, for example, and will do just that if more capacity is needed. “We’ll have to use our crews and aircraft around the clock.”

In the nearer term, airport officials are working to consolidate vehicular traffic by opening a single rental-car facility -- replacing rental companies’ individual lots -- proposed for an area between the Ted Williams Tunnel and East Boston’s Jeffries Point neighborhood. The new facility will put all the rental-car agencies in one building, where the agencies’ separate, proprietary buses will be replaced by a single shuttle service, cutting down on air pollution and freeing up curb space near the terminals. It will include other eco-friendly elements, too, such as solar panels to generate some of the building’s electricity, a system using recycled water for washing the rental cars, and rainwater irrigation for the green space that will surround the new facility.