RAILforum: Using more trains as airport connections,etc.

This is topic Using more trains as airport connections,etc. in forum Amtrak at RAILforum.

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Posted by tdavis (Member # 1907) on :

There is an article in today's USA TODAY about all the smaller airports that are losing airline service and good connections. Like in Europe, we should rely on the EFFICIENT way of traveling by using connections between MORE cities, not less, like some members and congress want. I think all of us should use that article as another lobbying point to congress. The airlines should even like that if we send MORE trains to the airport connections as well! What do you think, everybody?

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tdavis

Posted by MPALMER (Member # 125) on :

Great idea, but these proposals tend to create turf battles between the airlines & the transit lines.

In San Jose the local CalTrain service advertizes connections (via free shuttle bus) to the San Jose airport.

The San Francisco airport is getting a direct BART connection, but it took a long time to plan.

In Los Angeles the MTA Green Line passes a mile east and connects by free shuttle bus.

Newark NJ now has an AirTrain that connects to Amtrak's NEC/Penn Station Manhattan?

But people hate to schlepp a bunch of bags over several connecting modes so direct rail platform to air terminal transfers are best.

In Burbank the local Amtrak Surfliner stops about 1/4 mile-1/2 mile from the Air Terminal.

The trains help get some passengers to the airlines, but a lot of the airports facing cutbacks are in less populated areas and rail service would not be economical...

Posted by irishchieftain (Member # 1473) on :

Great idea, but these proposals tend to create turf battles between the airlines & the transit lines

Why? After all, they are technically cooperating, certainly not competing. You can't fly from the airport into the city center, and believe me, it's better to take a train than a bus...

Posted by MPALMER (Member # 125) on :

The turf battles are over the great cost of establishing a station within an airport. Who pays? How paid?

In Los Angeles, they determined an air ticket tax would be unfair because it taxes every flying passenger for a service used by a few (never mind that street traffic would be [slightly] less crowded if people used transit.)

I should have said the "local Airport Authority" is competing with the transit agencies.

Maybe the taxi companies and shuttle bus folks protested too; I don't remember the other reasons.

But there is a place for a "wye" on the MTA Green Line, so if they ever get the approval and funds this extension to the LAX airport could be built.