Rental Car Center West Field Road was the one intermediate stop (and only stop that trains stopped at in both directions) on the SFO AirTrain Blue Line outside the inner terminal loop on its route to the Rental Car Center when it first opened. It is a station open to public but primarily designed to provide service to airport and airline employees, including the West Cargo area facilities and employee parking, and not more public areas. Therefore the station was built more minimally than most of the others. The stop consists of two side platforms (a rarity for an intermediate bi-directional airport people mover stop) that are both open to air are still with platform screen doors, glass windscreens along the platform walls and nearly fully covered by a simple grey canopy structure.
The two platforms don’t have an intermediate mezzanine with the stairs, escalator and elevator leading directly down to the street. The only way to get between the platforms is by crossing the northbound lanes of McDonnell Road at its intersection with West Field Road, the elevated AirTrain concrete guideway and stations are located over just the northbound lanes of West Field Road, with the station at the name level and quite close to a long overhead highway ramp that provides a direct connection from the airport terminal area to I-380 (a short 3.3 mile with just one intermediate exit connector freeway) to I-280.
The Airport Terminals-bound platform contains a staircase to a northern pedestrian island, and a staircase next to an up escalator to the southern pedestrian island in the middle of the intersection of McDonnell Road and West Field Road. The entrances to the Long Term Parking-bound platform are flipped there is a simple staircase that winds its way down to the SE corner, and a staircase next to a normally down escalator plus an elevator down the NE corner. The elevator shaft is clad in silver sheeting.
Photos 1-6: June 11, 2013; 7-42: January 13, 2024
