NEW YORK — Light rail, express buses, ferry service, and subway extensions are among the new public-transit options to connect Manhattan and LaGuardia Airport released Wednesday by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
The website amNY.com reports a total of 14 options are offered as alternatives to the controversial AirTrain project that would run between the airport and subway and Long Island Rail Road stations at Willits Point in Queens. That project received the federal go-ahead last year [see “LaGuardia AirTrain project gets FAA approval,” Trains News Wire, July 21, 2021], but was subsequently placed on hold by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul over neighborhood concerns, as well as the roundabout nature of the AirTrain connection.
The options include five different potential light rail routes, including one that essentially follows the AirTrain route and another that would extend south to the JFK Airport AirTrain at Jamaica. Two options for extensions of the N and W subway lines are also included. Maps of each options are available at the LaGuardia AirTrain website.
Two meetings, scheduled for March 16 and March 24, are planned to allow the public to comment on the new plans.
Philadelphia has commuter rail service to the Airport, with separate stations for different terminals. At one time, Amtrak used the line for service to Atlantic City, also stopping at 30th St. Station. Amtrak even registered as an airline and had through fares. Amtrak turned the AC Line over to NJT; the Airport Line has always been Philadelphia’s.
https://septa.org/welcome/airport.html
Ever flown into JFK on an international redeye flight that arrives on Sunday 6AM? Need to make a domestic connection at LaGuardia? No buses, no taxis at that hour.
Watching a mad scramble of people trying to make connections by commandeering the few limo services who don’t want to get busted by the Taxi Commission for doing ad hoc pick ups.
Good luck finding *any* Lyft or Uber drivers that early on a weekend.
I vote yes on a transit based connection between JFK and LaGuardia.
I advocate for the same between O’Hare and Midway as well.
JOHN, I see your pain but I don’t understand your itinerary. Changing between JFK and LGA makes as much sense as riding Amtrak from Europe. There are all sorts of hubs where you can change between international and domestic at the same airport: Toronto, Atlanta, Nashville, Boston ….. even Newark.
Many flights out of Africa to JFK don’t have domestic connections with their partner airlines. So you have to shuttle up to LAG to get one. This was before many African flights started going into Atlanta-Hartsfield. This was a few years ago and I am sure much has changed in the interim years. But to not have a express rail service between the largest international hub (JFK) and the venue that host the most domestic traffic (LaGuardia) in a metro the size of NYC seems rather odd.
There’s no need for a light rail service to LaGuardia Airport.
The Q48 Bus Service from Main Street Flushing, Queens is a perfect connections. Creating a SBS out of the Q58 to LaGuardia Airport which has direct access to the Long Island Expressway to the Van Wyck Expressway.
If my proposal for the LIRR Brooklyn East Branch and Brooklyn Access would give Brooklyn and Bronx commuters a great opportunity to utilize the Q70 SBS at Woodside Station and Broadway in Queens.
#LIRRBrooklynEastBranch @Crossing5000
The buses and commuter railroads are best alternatives.
I would just extend the proposed Interboro Express to the Airport as “Phase 2” and then keep going in a big curve to the south to Jamaica as “Phase 3”. Or do the same with the N Subway.
Being NY and the usual impasse between the Port Authority and the MTA, the air train will probably be built. The idea of connecting the Astoria Line (N/W) to the LGA makes too much sense. OR, connecting the Flushing (7) line or even better the LIRR from Willets Point to LGA with one seat , fast service to either GCT or NY PENN. But this is NY.
There’s some kind of arcane rule blocking the construction of subway or heavy rail straight to the airports, isn’t there?
Of course there is such a rule – what you propose makes too much sense so it can’t be allowed. Seriously though airports that sprawl, like ORD Chicago O’Hare also need a local circulation system that connects to the subway. Bus or people mover. At some airports there are buses that connect to nearby Amtrak or commuter rail stations – BWI Baltimore Thurgood Marshall, MKE Milwaukee Mitchell, and PVD Providence T F. Green. Also I think, not sure the EWR Newark Liberty has a people mover to a station on NEC.
People reading these pages aren’t big bus fans — consider BOS Boston Logan. The airport is a pain in the ar$e, greatly resembling the city itself. Buses all over the place – — buses to rental cars, buses to the Blue Line subway station, the Silver Line is a glorified bus (diesel or overhead electric, at different segments of the route) – and buses to cities and towns throughout eastern Mass and to some places in Rhode Island, Maine and New Hampshire.
Since you use O’Hare as an example. Metra built an O’Hare Station that stops right next to the rental car lots on Bessie Coleman Drive. But when it was requested to connect that station with a walkway to the O’Hare recirculator, no go. It would “steal” traffic from the CTA O’Hare line they said. Even though studies show it would be suburbanites who frequent it.
So patrons have to use an infrequent shuttle bus that takes them to the terminal, when a high speed method resides just 100 yards away blocked by a fence. If you dare try to walk it (with your luggage in tow) you have to walk to the entrance on Bessie Coleman (another 400 yards). So ideal when its raining or snowing.
As for why there aren’t more Amtrak Stations in airports is because all the stations are in the downtowns and the airports are away from the city. Miami even built an Amtrak Station at the airport and they refuse to use it.
If Amtrak ever get reformed, that is one thing I would tackle right away is air and rail integration.
Anyone have information on what Mr. Haisell asks? If that’s true, how did the CTA make it to ORD and MDW?
That arcane rule has been dropped.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3v5j3/us-airports-no-longer-have-to-build-their-own-crappy-trains
As for ORD and MDW, I am not sure, but I would guess they got an exception as Dan Rostenkowski ran House Ways & Means back then.
Four decades after his death, New York’s anti-rail development boss Robert Moses continues to blow a Bronx Cheer at us. When Robert Moses was still alive and active, I noticed the lack of access to LGA back when I flew in and out of it several times …. In the 1960’s. Fifty-five years ago.
I’d give it another fifty-five years, or seventy-five or eighty-five years, New York will come up with something by then. Someone born today might or might not ride this train before he or she dies of old age.
I wonder if New Yorkers have noticed that airports around the world and some in America as well have solved this issue.
I also remember when we were told that LGA was slowly sinking into the swamp and would have to be abandoned. Permit me to go off-topic for a moment: I have memories of Mayor LaGuardia – 1. Breaking up pinball machines with an axe because they were gambling devices. 2. Reading the Sunday comics on the radio. 3. Two quotations; a) “When I make a mistake, it’s a beaut.” b) “I believe the good Lord put grapes on this earth for a reason, and I do not believe that reason was grape jelly.”