Trophy project or a vital piece of New York’s infrastructure puzzle?
The Federal Aviation Administration on July 20 approved the $2.1 billion elevated AirTrain transit connector for LaGuardia Airport in northern Queens, reviving spirited debate over an undertaking that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has championed.
It is already fourfold over budget and two years late.
Under the FAA’s
It would connect the airport, landlocked between Flushing Bay and the Grand Central Parkway and long a motorist’s nightmare, with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Mets-Willets Point station, which serves the No. 7 subway line and the Long Island Rail Road’s Port Washington branch.
That station is adjacent to both the New York Mets’ Citi Field and the U.S. National Tennis Center, home to the U.S. Open.
Assuming construction is done by 2026, officials project the connector to carry about 9,100 passengers daily.
Proponents say the current plan is the best available option for reducing car traffic and meshes well with other big transit projects in the area.
“The LGA AirTrain will also leverage the extraordinary redevelopment of LGA and the soon-to-be-opened East Side Access to create a connected intermodal system, providing capacity for continued growth and prosperity and connecting our region to the world,” said Tom Wright, president of transit-centric think tank Regional Plan Association.
Critics call the route too roundabout, slower than the current MTA bus shuttle and disruptive to the adjacent East Elmhurst neighborhood. Some visionaries had called for a direct subway link to Manhattan.
Cuomo unveiled the project in 2015 as part of an overall LaGuardia facelift, originally estimating a $450 million cost and a 2019 completion date. Port Authority officials still maintain that passenger facility charges will backstop the undertaking, although variables hover including air travel as the COVID-19 pandemic lingers.
“They roll out a discounted price, then it goes up by 20% to 30%, then a factor of four; $2.1 billion is not a done-deal number,” said Jonathan Peters, a finance and data-analytics professor at the College of Staten Island. “Someone’s going to get left with the bill.
“The question is, is this a piece of infrastructure we need and who is to pay for it, and to what extent does this crowd out something else that’s needed? In New York, there are so many different things to be done.”
How to pay is the big question, according to Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.
“If we get the infrastructure from passenger fees, fine,” she said. “If you have to divert from other infrastructure, such as the MTA, not so fine.”
A connector to Midtown would have probably cost twice as much, Gelinas said.
“It’s either this or nothing,” she said. “This is a lot better than nothing. People will take it.”
Any infrastructure bill that Congress passes could also help fund the project, Gelinas added.
“The Biden infrastructure bill is stripped down from what it was in February, but Biden cares a lot about LaGuardia,” she said.
Named after Fiorello LaGuardia, a populist mayor from 1934 to 1945, the airport operates domestic flights within 1,500 miles under a so-called perimeter rule. The exceptions are Denver International Airport and Saturday flights.
In July, through Tuesday, the Transportation Security Administration screened more than 54.9 million passengers, more than triple its July 2020 numbers and roughly 79% of July 2019 traffic.
LaGuardia has long been to air travelers what Penn Station has been to rail commuters: outdated, tight-fitting, chaotic and reviled.
Biden railed at LaGuardia during a speech in Philadelphia in 2014.
“If I took you and blindfolded you and took you to LaGuardia Airport in New York, you'd think, ‘I must be in some third-world country,’” he said.
The airport is undergoing a terminal transformation, as part of a public-private partnership with
And it is only nine miles from Manhattan, half the distance of its metropolitan peers John F. Kennedy International, in southern Queens, and Newark Liberty International, in New Jersey.
“It’s very important because it’s not just New York City. Westchester County and Connecticut use it,” said Mitchell Moss, director of New York University’s Rudin Center for Transportation.
“Anyone who has gone to LaGuardia can tell you the hardest part is getting off the roadway and getting to the terminal,” said Moss, who grew up near the airport. “The roadway isn’t big enough. It serves not just people from the central business district but from the region.”
After the Port Authority began work on LaGuardia’s Central Terminal in 2016, local news footage showed people exiting taxis and for-hire vehicles and toting baggage along the jammed Grand Central Parkway to reach the terminal.
“They have to reduce traffic in the airport. There’s too much uncertainty.” Moss added.
“There’s nothing worse than waiting for a taxi when you’re in New York City. Getting to Kennedy Airport is more difficult than going to Paris. The Van Wyck Expressway is un-American.”
The LaGuardia connector, Moss added, could pressure the MTA to beef up its Long Island Rail Road service, especially at rush hour. The role of commuter rail within cities has become a topic of wider debate across the country.
As critics note, the station at Willets Point is on the only LIRR branch that bypasses the railroad's hub at Jamaica, lowering the AirTrain's usefulness to most Long Islanders.
Passengers at Newark and Kennedy airports pay $7.75 fares to ride their AirTrains on top of whatever rail fare they paid to reach the AirTrain station. Frequent service disruptions have affected Newark’s system.
Community groups, including environmental organization Riverkeeper, have threatened to sue the FAA over the LaGuardia project, citing a flawed process.
“Riverkeeper is reviewing the record of decision and weighing our options,” said its senior attorney, Mike Dulong. He cited the construction above the Malcolm X Promenade waterfront parkland in the East Elmhurst, which he termed an “environmental justice community.”
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Jessica Ramos, both Queens Democrats, have criticized the project.
“This is a huge slap in the face by Gov. Cuomo to the residents of East Elmhurst,” Ramos said. “COVID has already taken a devastating toll on our neighbors. The last thing we need is a multi-billion-dollar vanity project that will further affect the health and well-being of our communities.”
Riverkeeper said documents it obtained through a Freedom of Information lawsuit showed the FAA had initially called out the Port Authority for embellishing benefits of the AirTrain; cherry-picking its transit project selection criteria; and excluding ferry service from meaningful consideration.
In its record of decision, the FAA nixed an alternative that some advocates had favored, a link from the N train’s Astoria-Ditmars Boulevard terminal point, less than three miles away. The alternative, the FAA said, would have disrupted Amtrak travel over the Hell Gate Bridge because of trestle adjustments and both subway and commuter rail in the neighborhood.
Peter Vallone, a City Council member from Queens and its speaker from 1990 to 2001, opposed any elevated extension. The MTA in mid-2003 scrapped plans to extend the N train. Competing regional infrastructure priorities included the need to rebuild Lower Manhattan after the Sept. 11 attacks.
“It can’t be dismissed as NIMBYism,” Gelinas said while invoking the acronym for “not in my backyard.”
“People do not want years and years of disruptions,” she said.
“To give up the perfect route for political considerations is not a bad thing.”
