NEW YORK — A long-discussed rail link to LaGuardia Airport and replacement of the current monorail link to Newark Liberty Airport were among more than $4 billion in projects approved Thursday by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Each of the rail projects will cost about $2 billion, the Associated Press reports.
The LaGuardia train will connect the airport to rail lines serving midtown Manhattan. A Port Authority study estimates that the train will handle between 6.6 million and 10 million trips annually as an alternative to traffic-choked access that can see drivers need more than an hour to go 8 miles.
The LaGuardia line will connect to the Long Island Rail Road and subway No. 7 line at Willits Point in Queens, the station which serves the New York Mets’ stadium, Citi Field, and the U.S. Tennis Center, home of the U.S. Open. Travel time on the new line is estimated at 6 minutes.
The project at Newark will replace a 23-year-old monorail with a 3-mile route between the airport and the Amtrak/NJ Transit Liberty Airport station on the Northeast Corridor. That system is frequently shut down for repairs.
The Port Authority board also approved $80 million for work in New Jersey to accommodate longer trains on PATH rail lines.
When I rode the Newark Airtrain many years ago now, people _were_ using it, except on the portion going over to the NEC. I think the connection to the NEC is a joke basically. It doesn’t go anywhere without having to transfer, slows down every train that stops at the NEC station, and involves a huge facility for the transfer that needs to be maintained. If we’re going to have a real people mover at the airport, it should connect directly to Newark Penn Station, where people can transfer to all the existing services there, Amtrak, NJT, the Newark subway, NJT Busses, Greyhound, and not to mention downtown Newark. I suspect people might actually use that connection.
OK LaGuardia is a disgrace. Trump called it third world. So fix it or get rid of the whole thing. But why is a 23 year old monorail obsolete? Shouldn’t a rail line last for 100 years? I have ridden the Newark airport monorail and found it lightly used and basically weird. Do Amtrak trains stop there or just NJT. Either way nobody uses the darn thing. 2 billion dollars is a lot to spend on something like that when NY/NJ has glaring transportation need like a 2nd GW bridge and getting rid of the extortion tolls on the over taxed bridges and tunnels. 2 billion could pay a lot of tolls.
OK I looked it up. You guys were right and I was dead wrong, dead dead dead wrong. The Airtrain does run above the Van Wyck. The expressway was named after a long-ago Mayor of New York. According to Wikipedia, both pronunciations are in use, no one knows which is correct. Rhymes with “like” or “lick”. The Dutch pronunciation of Van Wijk, possibly the original spelling, rhymes with “like” or possibly “lake” (with a very sharp “a”) in Netherlands, anyone’s guess in New York.
There are some older freeways I’ve been on that haven’t been updated, looking just as in the late 1950’s, such as Detroit’s Edsel B. Ford or Chicago’s Edens. The Van Wyck has been updated (my sincere apologies to Ian) thus accommodating the train.
MICHAEL – My understanding is that to line follows an unused LIRR R/W.
Nathaniel – There’s pretty much no way to get to LaGuardia so you might as well take the Van Wyck although it doesn’t go to LaGuardia.
Nathaniel – Here’s what I’ve never figured out. Who were:
Van Wyck (Queens County, New York)
Major Deegan (Bronx County, New York)
John C. Lodge (Wayne County, Michigan) (He was a prewar Detroit politician but beyond that, know nothing)
Bishop Ford (Cook County, Illinois)
Dan Ryan (Cook County, Illinois) (He may have been a Cook County politician)
We still don’t have a definitive answer on the route of the JFK train. I surely must take back what I posted earlier. Maybe it does follow the Van Wyck. How would I know? I’ve not been to JFK in 50 years. Or anywhere in New York City in twenty years.
Actually probably does follow the Van Wyck. The route I conjectured earlier doesn’t go to Jamaica but the Van Wyck does. So I likely was wrong. If so my apologies.
I’ve never been to New York. But I learned from Seinfeld to not take the Van Wyck to LaGuardia.
For as long as I’ve been alive there has been talk of extending the PATH south to the airport. $4 billion doesn’t go as far as it used to.
Doesn’t the line from JFK Airport to Jamaca also follow the Van Wyck ?
IAN – “It would not be difficult to go do the Van Wyck Expressway”. You posted. Please follow up with a typical cross section and a basic plan and profile. Then you might find it not only difficult but impossible.
It would not be that difficult to go down the VanWyck Expressway to the Jamaica LIRR station. Just a thought.
@John Rice: Please elaborate on what Chicago is blocking. ORD and MDW both have one seat ride trainsit operations to downtown. Southwest/United/American are in direct competition. They might be at different airports in Chicago, but they are at the same airport in many cities across the country.
Airlines don’t like *any* regular connectivity, especially higher speed than a car, type of transit between airports.
It tends to place airlines in different airports in competition with each other and they don’t like that.
Many have proposed the same between O’Hare and Midway in Chicago and CDoA blocks it because they explicitly don’t want Southwest to be in direct competition with United/American.
The airlines just don’t want people to arbitrage fares between nearby airports, especially for connections.
Why wouldn’t they just extend the subway to LAG ?
Means that none of the three airports, JFK, EWR nor LGA will have a one-seat connection to any important destination.
Obviously no airport has a one-seat connection to everywhere; one hopes there will at least be a one-seat connection to somewhere significant.
I will leave it to our Jersey contingent to comment on how long the previous EWR connection lasted.
I think John Rice means between, Meaning a train from MDW to ORD, It can be done on the Cicero Av corridor, Up to the Kennedy Expressway to connect to the Blue Line. Google Map it. If Im wrong, I apologize.