AirTrain Fare Pay, EWR v. JFK

[jamesrudoy]

AirTrain fare at JFK is collected as a separate charge. AirTrain fare at
EWR is included on the NJ Transit rail ticket. No notice is given to a
passenger arriving by air at EWR, who would not know of this fare
combination arrangement, especially if previous experience had been with
the JFK AirTrain. A description of each respective arrangement should be
posted prominently at every NJT vending machine at EWR and MetroCard vendor
at JFK.

--
- James Rudoy

[SMS]

grammatim wrote:

> They could've simply run the PATH duorail to the airport and on to
> IKEA and the Jersey Commons mall (which is immense and just south of
> the airport).

OTOH, at SFO, running BART directly into the airport was not a good
plan. They should have extended the air train to the nearby
BART/CalTrain stations. BART ran two sets of dual tracks, on their
incredibly expensive (to build and operate) non-standard gauge system,
into the airport, one from the station north and one from the station
south (which is also where the rail line from San Jose has a station)
but soon found it uneconomical to operate trains from both stations. So
now if you get off CalTrain in Millbrae, you have to take BART one
station north to San Bruno, then get off and wait for a train heading
the other direction to the airport (prior to BART there was a free and
quick shuttle bus to the airport from the CalTrain station). They spent
hundreds of millions of dollars on BART to the airport, and now have
caused the people that used to come up from the south to the airport to
drive instead.

If you take BART from the north into the airport, you still have to
switch to the air train to get around from terminal to terminal (the
station is in a parking garage close to the international terminal, but
far from the three domestic terminals). It would have been far less
expensive to run the air train out to the BART and CalTrain stations,
and for most users would not have resulted in any extra train changes.

[grammatim]

On Apr 20, 3:06*pm, SMS <scharf.ste...@geemail.com> wrote:
> grammatim wrote:
> > They could've simply run the PATH duorail to the airport and on to
> > IKEA and the Jersey Commons mall (which is immense and just south of
> > the airport).
>
> OTOH, at SFO, running BART directly into the airport was not a good
> plan. They should have extended the air train to the nearby
> BART/CalTrain stations. BART ran two sets of dual tracks, on their
> incredibly expensive (to build and operate) non-standard gauge system,
> into the airport, one from the station north and one from the station
> south (which is also where the rail line from San Jose has a station)
> but soon found it uneconomical to *operate trains from both stations. So
> now if you get off CalTrain in Millbrae, you have to take BART one
> station north to San Bruno, then get off and wait for a train heading
> the other direction to the airport (prior to BART there was a free and
> quick shuttle bus to the airport from the CalTrain station). They spent
> hundreds of millions of dollars on BART to the airport, and now have
> caused the people that used to come up from the south to the airport to
> drive instead.
>
> If you take BART from the north into the airport, you still have to
> switch to the air train to get around from terminal to terminal (the
> station is in a parking garage close to the international terminal, but
> far from the three domestic terminals). It would have been far less
> expensive to run the air train out to the BART and CalTrain stations,
> and for most users would not have resulted in any extra train changes.

My PATH to the airport wouldn't be some sort of double spur. It would
simply extend the WTC - Newark line to the south and east.