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Critics Say It's Time To Close La Guardia Airport
HughPickens.com writes: George Haikalis writes in the NYT that last week, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey put off, yet again, deciding between two proposals for a nearly $4 billion project to rehabilitate the dilapidated Central Terminal Building at La Guardia Airport. But piling billions of taxpayer dollars into upgrading La Guardia, which has been likened to an experience "in a third world country," won't solve its fundamental problems. "It can't easily expand," says Haikalis. "Its two runways and four terminals are surrounded on three sides by water, making landing difficult and hazardous. Parking is a nightmare."
There are precedents for replacing airports close to the center city with modern, more outlying airports. Hong Kong and Denver are two examples; Berlin will soon follow suit. With the consolidation of the major United States airlines and the sluggishness in the global economy, the much larger Kennedy and Newark airports could accommodate La Guardia's passenger load, by adding more frequent service and using larger aircraft, if the F.A.A. were to lift the caps on the number of flights allowed there. Kennedy, with its two sets of parallel runways, could handle many more flights, particularly as new air-traffic control technology is introduced in the next few years. The money budgeted for the La Guardia upgrades would be better used to create a long-proposed one-ride express-rail link between Manhattan and J.F.K., by reviving a long-disused, 3.5-mile stretch of track in central Queens and completing the modernization of the terminals at Kennedy. "By avoiding the costly replacement of outmoded terminals at La Guardia and by creating a new express rail link and upgrading terminals at Kennedy, the increased economic activity could more than make up for the lost jobs," concludes Haikalis. "New York's importance to America's economy demands a first world vision to shutter this third world airport."
There are precedents for replacing airports close to the center city with modern, more outlying airports. Hong Kong and Denver are two examples; Berlin will soon follow suit. With the consolidation of the major United States airlines and the sluggishness in the global economy, the much larger Kennedy and Newark airports could accommodate La Guardia's passenger load, by adding more frequent service and using larger aircraft, if the F.A.A. were to lift the caps on the number of flights allowed there. Kennedy, with its two sets of parallel runways, could handle many more flights, particularly as new air-traffic control technology is introduced in the next few years. The money budgeted for the La Guardia upgrades would be better used to create a long-proposed one-ride express-rail link between Manhattan and J.F.K., by reviving a long-disused, 3.5-mile stretch of track in central Queens and completing the modernization of the terminals at Kennedy. "By avoiding the costly replacement of outmoded terminals at La Guardia and by creating a new express rail link and upgrading terminals at Kennedy, the increased economic activity could more than make up for the lost jobs," concludes Haikalis. "New York's importance to America's economy demands a first world vision to shutter this third world airport."
La Guardia is right next to the Triborough and at the top of the BQE. You can get to midtown via taxi in 20 minutes in heavy traffic. It takes ten minutes from the time you are off the Jetway, down the escalator, at the luggage carousel, and to the cab stand.
Granted, landing and taking off can be... exciting. One day we had a nasty tail wind, so the pilot had to gun the engines as we were making the turn onto the runway to get enough speed - something I've never seen anyone do before.
Otherwise, I'd give up useless amenities for expediency.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
It can be guaranteed that New York will choose the most expensive option, will have a budget overrun and will be 20 years late.
When you see likening to the third world country is a mere beginning of the campaign so that people would be believe that the issue is so big, so unsolvable that only a multi-billion dollar project can solve the issue. There will be proposals for floating on water airports, airports to be build on artificial islands.
For all I care, the NYC with one of the largest subway systems in the world for the last 85 years could not extend a subway link to Laguardia. I do not know what was the issue: corrupt taxicab companies or some other sinister reasons.
The issue is not Laguardia airport here, the issue is poor public transportation to certain airports, or truth the be told - absence of if, and there are many other airports in NYC metro area: Islip, Westchester, teterboro, Trenton, and so on.
In my opinion, travelers do not care about the appearance of the airports, all they want is convenient way to arrive, park or rent a car, and leave shortly. Politicians want appearance, costs be damned.
"Parking is a nightmare."
This statement implies parking is even possible.
Last time I went there to pick someone up, I drove around in circles in a holding pattern comparable to the planes themselves. "Parking" is not something that actually occurs at La Guardia.
=Smidge=
I find it far easier and more pleasant to take the train from Boston. Presumably the same holds for folks from Philly.
I'd also like to see more business travellers learn to use video conferencing instead of blowing off a few gigajoules on the theory that face-to-face is the only acceptable way to hold a meeting.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
The linked article (about Berlin Tegel) is simply wrong or at least confusing. Berlin Tegel is an old airport within city limits that was supposed to be closed when new Berlin Brandenburg airport opened. As the later data is not in sight thanx to incompetence, political corruption, changing requirements and some other disasters the old airport is still open and its opening dates are like weather - change. Take any other airport if you want to show successful creation of a new airport outside city limits replacing an old one within.
Take a look at hong Kong airport. They built an artificial island.
Buildings cause sudden changes in wind direction which is more dangerous than speed from one.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
The whole three major airport system in the NYC area is a mess. When we were looking at flying overseas we gave up on flying through New York. The flights from our local airport (YHZ) go in through LGA or Newark, but the outgoing Trans-Atlantic flights leave through JFK. We would either need to fly on separate tickets and risk loosing all of our money for a delayed flight, or make an unnecessary stopover in Detroit.
I understand that there may be too much traffic for one big airport, but there need to be airline run/approved shuttles between airports so flyers can transfer/connect without risk of losing a ton of money from a late flight.
------- Mark
It is primarily North American flights. When we lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, it was much easier to get to than JFK so we used it when possible. People get too hung up on things looking old. I'd rather have an old airport nearby than no airport or an airport that takes over an hour to get to on 3 trains. The approach is either fun or unnerving, depending on your personality. I found the approach into the old Hong Kong airport "fun", so you know where I'm at :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It now costs $110 for a taxi to downtown. Yeah, rail is opening next year, 20 years after the airport. That'll make it convenient for those traveling without children, skis, disabilities, or extended-stay luggage, and whose Denver location is near a stop on Denver's rail system, which was optimized for miles of track laid rather than number of useful locations served or transit time.
It just like in Kansas City where the asshole politicians want to rebuild what is the most convenient airport (for the local traveler) of anywhere in the country. You can be at your car in 1 minute from stepping off the plane. It's not about serving the citizenry, more about leeching taxes.
As a New Yorker, I much prefer LaGuardia, and strongly disagree with calls for its closing. As a small airport, it isn't burdened with its own size in terms of processing passengers. Everything at JFK takes longer than at LGA strictly because of magnitude.
JFK is literally too big to provide efficient service to individuals. Once the check-in & security hurdle is cleared, one still has to walk nearly a mile to get to their actual gate. Once boarded, the plane has to taxi for minutes just to arrive at the runway, where you will likely have to queue for an additional wait to takeoff. As others have mentioned, I easily save at least 30 minutes by flying from LGA, when adding up travel, check-in, security, walking to the gate, taxi-ing, and runway queuing.
I would love to see these large airports replaced with multiple smaller airports. A larger percentage of the population would have an airport nearby, and average travel times would be reduced significantly. It seems to me that planners are optimizing for everything except your personal experience when they design and advocate for mega-airports.
New York's three airports, run by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, made about a half a billion dollars in profit last year. Why not use that money? Oh wait, they use it to pay for loss-making operations like the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown. New York City's mass-transit system is $15 billion short of what it needs to invest over the next five years. The state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority runs permanent deficits and depends on billions of dollars each year in tax subsidies to stay afloat. Personally I feel the rates for the mass-transit system should be raised to meet the financial demands of running that service. We'd have plenty of money to resolve the airport issue, *without* needing to worry about siphoning taxpayer dollars.
Hong Kong is slightly different though. They can justify the expense of building an aritificial island to solve the hazardous approach issues with the former airport on the grounds that there simply was no other viable alternative as there was simply no way to suitably adapt the existing airport to make it safer or any preexisting alternative location. La Guardia has similar problems, but has far more alternative options than the "artificial island" approach, although its convenience to central NYC does make it a good location that makes simply closing it unattractive.
Still, the "all or nothing" solutions being proposed (close it or spending $4b renovating it) do seem a little restrictive though. Perhaps a better option would be to turn it into more of a City Airport for those actually travelling to NYC, while moving as much of the through "hub" and international traffic out to J.F.K and Newark where rapid access to NYC is much less important. You'd still need to overhaul the La Guardia terminal, but potentially on a much smaller scale, even allowing for potential future growth.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Dirty, nasty, and falling apart.
That's my basic impression of most of NYC. Beat up, dirty, and falling apart and no one seems to care much. I went to school not far from the city and have visited plenty of times. Almost moved there for a job once. But never have thought it was a pleasant place to be. Interesting? Sure. Impressive? Definitely. But also dirty, gross and highly overrated. New Yorkers simply don't seem to care much about living in a clean place. It's among the dirtiest big cities I've been to and I've been to Hong Kong, Tokyo, Shanghai, Singapore, Mexico City, and most of the big US and Canadian cities. (Singapore incidentally is by far the cleanest big city I've ever seen)
Having an airport close to the center of the city is a really useful asset but NYC seems to have neglected it like so much of the rest of the city. La Guardia could be really something special but it's just taken for granted.
According to AirNav, La Guardia handles around 1013 aircraft operations a day; that's 1013 takeoffs and landings per day. Compare to JFK, which handles 1232 aircraft operations a day with twice as many runways, or Newark, with 1098 aircraft operations a day.
The airport might suck and may or may not be inconvenient, but it is handling far more traffic than can be diverted to another existing airport. You could expand another existing airport to handle the excess traffic--but where? Teterboro? Caldwell in Essex County? Long Island Mac Arthur?
And the entire industry is moving away from long haul flights to shorter regional hops, meaning traffic operations are only going to increase. So assuming you can just divert all the flights to JFK and Newark isn't going to work; split the number of flights between the two and now you have two airports handling about the same amount of traffic as LAX, with 1741 flights/day. So even if we assume those airports can handle the increase in traffic, that pretty much will max out both airports and prevent future expansion.
Hong Kong International took nearly a decade to construct, in a regulatory environment which makes it easy to steamroll in large infrastructure projects. So constructing a new airport near Rikers Island is not going to happen over a weekend.
And if you did go the Hong Kong route, you may be better off spending the money, moving everything off Rikers Island, and expanding the airport by paving Rikers and adding two additional runways, modernizing La Guardia, and extending the subway system to run out to the terminals there.
Any company that does not have a good video conferencing system in at least 2 conference rooms is ran by morons.
Really? So I run a manufacturing company. My customers are almost all within 1 day's driving distance. Furthermore I have yet to run into a single problem that would have been better solved if only we had a video conferencing system in our conference room. Why? Because our problems are out of the factory floor, not in a conference room. When I need to visit a customer for something I can't do over the phone or email it's because I'm going to be spending time on a factory floor looking into the guts of a machine most likely. A conference room video chat would be utterly useless.
But we're morons because we don't have a good video conferencing system in two conference rooms. [/eyeroll] I think you don't know much about how business works in the real world.
Well... *someday* that same line that takes you to Reston is also going all the way to Dulles. Granted, the emphasis is on "someday", but at least the Silver Line is a real thing that is actually being built. Just late and over budget. Like everything else.
Contrast with extending the Orange line to Centreville, which is not happening and probably never will this century. Oh they're eminent domain-ing the I-66 corridor so you can fit more cars on it and charge tolls, but it will still be not enough and you're just adding more noise and pollution. Bah.
And no, I'm not bitter about that.
I think some people are just confused by the whole idea of factories in the US. We keep being told that all of that "factory-stuff" happens in China now.
Heh. Yeah, I get that a lot. The notion that we don't make anything in the US is a pretty bizarre one given that measured in dollars we manufacture more stuff than anyone. Funny thing is that many people take it as a given even though it's trivial to show that American manufacturing is alive and well and continuing to grow.
The thing I always hated about LaGuardia is that it is Taxi accessible only, I could never fathom why the N didn't get extended to resolve that. Other than doing that I think investing in LaGuardia is a mis-allocation of resources.
Several Million People live in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, but to catch an airplane they need to drive past MacArthur/Islip Airport on their way to JFK or LaGuardia through rather intense traffic or take the Long Island Railroad (which may depending on when they're travelling and which line still be slower than sitting in traffic). Spending the money expanding Islip would both add significant capacity for the region and provide a lot of convenience.
Considering New York-Princeton-Philadelphia as a single very large market, Trenton is the most interesting of the Auxilliary Airports. It is not only the shortest drive airport for Central New Jersey (Princeton and New Brunswick), but it is also the shortest drive for airport for the Northern Philadelphia Suburbs including the Northeastern corner of Philadelphia itself and King of Prussia (which is the economic centre of the Philadelphia Market, not downtown). Right now the transit connections to Trenton are awful, but with about 6 miles of track to build there could be direct service from Trenton Airport on three lines to Center City Philadelphia, Camden NJ and New York City. Politically the region either needs to either be taken over by a state or regional authority or get an exemption from the outdated federal restrictions on commercial flights at private airports and be privatized because the Municipal authority that owns it changes their mind every few years as to whether they want to expand it or shut it down entirely.
Because of the tangled politics the money will probably be wasted on a renovation of LaGuardia (probably without the subway extension its always needed and no added capacity or other benefits to travellers than a shiny terminal), rather than on ISP or TNN expansion which would provide much greater benefit to travellers.
minds, get scrambled like eggs, abused and erased. Hard Hearted Alice is who you want to see.