RONKONKOMA, N.Y. — The state of New York will spend $150 million to connect the Long Island Rail Road’s Ronkonkoma station with a proposed new terminal at Long Island MacArthur Airport, a facility served by four commercial airlines.
The project, announced Wednesday, Feb. 12, by Gov. Kathy Hochul, will include purchase of 48 acres of land, a pedestrian walkway linking the airport and station, redesigned roadways, and other infrastructure upgrades. Hochul has previously committed $40 million for a new north terminal adjacent to the train station. The main terminal is currently on the opposite side of the airport, served by Southwest, JetBlue, Frontier, and Breeze airlines. The airport serves about 5,000 passengers a day.
“Moving MacArthur’s terminal closer to Ronkonkoma station will encourage people to take the train to the airport,” Long Island Rail Road President Rob Free said in a press release. “The LIRR is already the best travel experience to JFK and we are ready to help MacArthur Airport grow by bringing that same great travel experience there too.”
Said Empire State Development CEO Hope Knight, “The direct connection between MacArthur Airport and the LIRR network will create new opportunities for business development, tourism, and job creation that will benefit Long Island for generations to come.”
Suffolk County will also put $50 million into the project, WCBS-TV reports. The county is also involved in the effort to bring Amtrak service to Ronkonkoma, a prospect included in the Federal Railroad Administration’s Corridor Identification and Development Program in 2023 [see “Full list of passenger routes …,” Trains News Wire, Dec. 8, 2023].
ISP MacArthur Airport needs help. I looked it up on Wikipedia. Traffic peaked in 2007 and has since dropped like a stone. You can’t get to places like Chicago without a transfer. Given the huge populations of Nassau and Suffolk Counties, that’s really strange.
With all the recent chatter in aviation circles about secondary airports like BDL Hartford or PVD Rhode Island, it escapes me why ISP is such a downer.
Anyway, it seems this article here on TRAINS is a bit hazy. As I read it, it seems that what is proposed is a new terminal (closer to LIRR), not a new rail line.