I have been picking up guests at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport for years and the lower level pickup area has totally gotten out of hand. Although there is a convenient cellphone waiting lot at the airport, everyone ignores it and sits with engines off on their cellphones waiting for their arrival pickups. The cars are double-parked, with drivers just sitting on their phones, leaving only one of the three lanes to drive through for a passenger pickup. Even the third outside lane gets blocked, as there is no room to pull in for your pickup.

This is the only major airport in the U.S. that I have seen that allows this. Major airports have police walking through the parked cars, making them move if there is no passenger right there to be picked up, and ticketing cars with no driver in them. In downtown Anchorage, meter maids are just waiting to ticket you if your meter expires by a couple of minutes. They need to relocate some of the downtown ticket writers to the airport and start giving tickets out, as it‘s a terrible experience right now to try and pick up passengers there.
— David Mathison
Anchorage

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