JFK AirTrain to open at end of year

The Journal News; Original publication: June 17, 2002; By Caren Halbfinger

A $1.9 billion rail system expected to open at the end of this year will free thousands of John F. Kennedy Airport passengers from sitting in traffic jams on the Van Wyck Expressway and Belt Parkway.

 

The AirTrain — an elevated, guided light rail that will loop around airport terminals — is being designed to ease congestion, improve airport access and free valuable land at JFK, said Tony Cracchiolo, the system's program director.

 

"JFK is only 16 miles from midtown Manhattan, but it might as well be the other side of the world,'' said Cracchiolo, who is director of priority capital programs for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which manages the airport. "It can be a two-hour ride by taxi or limo or car, particularly in the afternoon, when a lot of flights leave. When you compound that with rush-hour traffic or a Yankees or a Mets game, we really need to find a better, more reliable, quicker way to get to the airport.''

 

The Port Authority launched the project in 1998. Service on a 3.3-mile elevated track from Howard Beach in Queens and the 1.8-mile airport loop is expected to begin at the end of this year. In June 2003, the AirTrain will be accessible to more people via a three-mile extension to the Jamaica station in Queens, where total improvements won't be finished until 2005.

 

The train will run on a dedicated track and connect the airport to the A, C and H trains at the Howard Beach subway station and to the E, J and Z lines, the Long Island Rail Road and 40 bus routes at the Jamaica station.

 

The Port Authority expects the AirTrain to bring about 5,000 airport employees and 6,000 passengers to the airport each day from the Jamaica station and Howard Beach. An additional 23,000 AirTrain passengers are expected to use the rail line to travel from one terminal to another, or to employee parking and car rental lots.

 

The AirTrain is being developed and will be run by Skanska USA and Bombardier Transportation as the AirTrain Consortium. Most of the construction cost is being covered by passenger airport departure taxes. A small portion will come from Port Authority capital funds.

 

Cracchiolo said the AirTrain would cost between $25 million and $28 million annually to run, with about half the operating expense to be covered by fares that he said would be competitive with the $11 Carey buses that go to the airport from midtown. The remainder will come from a combination of advertising revenues and fees paid by rental car companies, who will no longer need their own shuttle buses since the AirTrain will deliver passengers to their lots. Any shortfall will be made up by the airlines, Cracchiolo said.

 

About half the AirTrain's passengers are expected to come from Manhattan. Others are expected to originate from Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island, with the smallest number coming from Westchester County. The trip from Westchester would begin with a Metro-North ride to Grand Central Terminal, from where travelers could take the 6 train uptown to 51st Street, then transfer to the E train to the Jamaica station. That trip would take about 45 minutes. Or passengers could head to Penn Station, from where the trip to JFK would take less than 40 minutes.

 

"This is really a benefit to the business traveler or to the leisure traveler who is traveling fairly light and going on a short trip,'' Cracchiolo said. "If you as a business traveler are spending the day in the office in Manhattan and catching an afternoon flight, this is where I see you using it. I think that is going to be very popular.''

 

This new system is an improvement over the train-to-the-plane that has been available for years because it runs on a track that stands on concrete piles, towering 35 feet over the highway, so it is not subject to highway or airport traffic jams.

 

The existing train-to-the-plane relies on a shuttle bus that can take 20 to 40 minutes just to go from the Howard Beach subway station to any airport terminal, depending on congestion. The AirTrain will make that trip in eight to 12 minutes from the Jamaica station.

 

"I think it'll be great,'' said Jon Orcutt, a spokesman for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a transit advocacy group.

 

"Within the space of a few years, we will have connected the rails to the airports in our two biggest regions. La Guardia has got to fall into line at some point. That's where the real business travel is.''

 

The Newark Airport AirTrain, which operates between Penn Station and Newark Airport, as well as from Princeton, N.J., and other New Jersey locations, now averages 2,600 daily passengers — triple the number it anticipated when it opened in October 2001. The one-way fare from Manhattan is $11.55, about one-fourth the cost of a cab ride with tip and tolls.

 

"I've taken the AirTrain from Newark and it worked great,'' said Craig Sieve, a consultant from Portsmouth, N.H., who was taking a recent flight from Westchester County Airport but also uses JFK. "I would take it. There are no hold-ups because of traffic and I tend to meet with a lot of clients around Penn Station.''

 

Tim Bennett of Wilton, Conn., who works in midtown Manhattan, said he used the AirTrain in Chicago and would be happy to use the one to JFK. The Port Authority expects "railcentric'' commuters like Sieve and Bennett to be its biggest customers, Cracchiolo said, and recognizes that other business travelers will avoid the AirTrain.

 

"I'm never going to take it,'' said Andy Robertson of Ridgefield, Conn. "When I go to JFK, I leave from my house and I travel with a car service.''

 

"I would take a limo,'' said Robert Villari of White Plains. "It's more convenient.''

 

The Port Authority won't rely on business customers alone to fill the AirTrain's seats. Airport employees should make up nearly half the AirTrain's anticipated daily passengers. Like their Newark counterparts, they will be able to buy discounted monthly tickets. When more employees start leaving their cars at home, land now dedicated to employee parking could be freed for airport growth, Cracchiolo said.

 

"Most people drive to the airport who work at the airport,'' Cracchiolo said. "We're trying to get those people out of their cars. Every car we take off the Van Wyck and the Belt Parkway makes it easier for people who have to take their cars to the airport and makes it easier to get the nearly 2 million tons of cargo to and from the airport.''

 

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