[PRCo] Re: pat__service__cuts__2007.01.23-changed to 2/1/07

[Fred Schneider]

Phil Craig and Jack May are the ones with whom to talk on the subject  
of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's airport properties  
(Newark, Kennedy, LaGuardia).   One of them did tell me two weeks ago  
that the rail fares were set to preserve the parking lots.   But if  
you pay an NJT ticket from Newark to Elizabeth and get off at the  
airport, you avoid the Newark Airport surcharge.

The same reason applies to why the Green Line LRT in Los Angeles was  
never extended into LAX.

There are a surprising number of airports in the U. S. that do have  
decent mass transit service:  Logan in Boston; O'Hare in Chicago;  
Baltimore-Washington with the LRT in the terminal and Amtrak on the  
east side of the property; and, as you said, Philly an exhorbitant  
fare from the airport (but a cheap bus ride); LAX has a bus shuttle  
to the light rail to make it complicated; Cleveland's Hopkins Airport  
has the subway; Atlanta is on MARTA's southern subway line; BART goes  
into the SFO terminal building; Kennedy's expensive people mover  
reaches both the Long Island RR at Jamaica and the A train at Howard  
Beach; Minneapolis actually uses the light rail as the intra-airport  
terminal shuttle; Portland's Tri-Met runs a light rail branch into  
the airport terminal; Seattle should have light rail to SeaTac  
Airport in another two or three years; DART should be serving Dallas  
Fort Worth Airport by 2013 with light rail and does not Toronto now  
have a branch of TTC's subway?     Someone will tell me what I missed.

Most of these facilities never affect airport parking in any way  
because the arriving and departing passengers don't use mass  
transit.   It's the pilots, the cabin crews, the airport staff, the  
McDonald's counter help, the baggage handlers that come to the  
airport on transit and that saves the airport from providing employee  
parking in private areas around the terminal.   You really don't see  
many people on those public transport vehicles going to airports with  
suitcases but still the lobbyists for the parking authorities are  
running scared.


On Feb 6, 2007, at 8:43 AM, John Swindler wrote:

>
>
> It's a six zone trip in Philly.  The soaking of the airline  
> passengers is
> even more blatent at Newark.  Some have suggested it is to keep the  
> cab
> drivers happy.  I suspect it is a management decision not to let  
> transit
> interfere with the parking garage cash flow.
>
> And then there is Washington National and the metro station location
> decisions.
>
> The 28X comments are interesting.  Busways may be ok, but the buses  
> still
> get stuck in rush hour traffic.  Looked at experience with  
> Overbrook LRT vs
> South busway schedules at city end, then wondered whose decision it  
> was to
> go with an Airport busway (to use original selling point) rather  
> then light
> rail.
>
> John
>
>
>
>
>> From: Joshua Dunfield <joshuad at cs.cmu.edu>
>> Reply-To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
>> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
>> Subject: [PRCo] Re: pat__service__cuts__2007.01.23-changed to  
>> 2/1/07 Date:
>> Mon, 05 Feb 2007 18:43:51 -0500
>>
>> Derrick Brashear wrote:
>>> 28x will at least still take me to Pittsburgh from PIT; To get to
>> Oakland,
>>> about 45 minutes. To be fair, the West Busway works ok so to  
>>> downtown
>> it's
>>> probably about the same. Compared to Arlanda Express the 28x is a
>> bargain,
>>> too. It's probably underpriced.
>>
>> IIRC, the West Busway reroute cut all of 2 minutes off the  
>> scheduled time.
>> But maybe the Parkway West already worked okay?  (OK, the West Busway
>> almost
>> certainly increased schedule reliability, which is good.)
>>
>> Soaking airline passengers is a great tradition that PAT needs to  
>> be part
>> of.  It works pretty well in Philly -- $5.50 one-way, free if you  
>> have a
>> pass, *any* pass, including the relatively cheap city transit pass  
>> that
>> you wouldn't normally have a prayer of using on a Zone 5 Regional  
>> Rail
>> trip.
>> The airport workers can get to their jobs without blowing half their
>> paycheck, and the passengers can get to their flight without  
>> blowing $25
>> on a cab.
>>
>> -j.
>>
>
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