Changes to the Commonwealth and Kings Avenue bridges or the construction of new bridges would be required to link Civic to the parliamentary zone by light rail.
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The Canberra Airport Group has proposed that light rail services be built between Civic, the airport and the parliamentary triangle.
The ACT Government already has ambitious plans for a light rail network, with stage one to run between Civic and Gungahlin.
ACT Sustainable Development Minister Simon Corbell said the airport's ideas would be investigated as part of a light rail master planning process.
"They clearly understand as a leading business the value of light rail in terms of increasing land values and encouraging more people and more transport to occur close to public transport,'' Mr Corbell said.
The master plan would also look at options for how to get trams across Lake Burley Griffin.
"We would need to consider how light rail would get across the lake,'' Mr Corbell said.
"It may require the construction of bridge infrastructure or alterations to existing bridge infrastructure.
"These will be investigated in a high-order fashion as part of the master planning work.''
Damien Haas, of lobby group ACT Light Rail, praised Canberra Airport managing director Stephen Byron for proposing the light rail extension.
Mr Haas said additional bridges might have to be built across Lake Burley Griffin to accommodate light rail.
"Once Civic to Gungahlin is in, I think bridge-to-bridge would be a logical extension,'' Mr Haas said.
"Certainly, probably the major investment would be putting those two bridges in and that would satisfy a lot of public transport issues in the parliamentary triangle.''
Mr Haas said a light rail connection between Civic and the airport would need high rates of usage to be viable.
"The only way that light rail from Civic to the airport would work would be with the commuting volume of both Russell and Brindabella Business Park workers using it,'' Mr Haas said.
The proposal is not without some irony - 27 years ago The Canberra Times included the idea of a grand third bridge, 47 metres high, in a special April 1 front page as an April Fools' day joke.
The newspaper's faux 1986 story was constructed in such a way to outrage as many interest groups as possible, and prompted heated discussion on talkback radio.
with Hamish Boland-Rudder
