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God, so what with the 7. People are taking the Q70 and Q47 buses to the 7/E/M/R/F at Jackson Heights anyways.
They're taking the buses to Jackson Heights and a great deal of them are getting on the E/M/R/F lines - NOT the 7.
That's the whole point - the Jackson Heights hub offers 4 additional subways to get to Manhattan. This is a very different scenario than wanting all airport passengers to pile into only one train line (the 7, which is the only subway available at the station where they want to build the airtrain).
I go through the Jackson Heights station several times a week and I almost never see airport passengers with luggage on the 7 train. Conversely, I see people with luggage on the Queens Blvd lines (E/F/R/M) all the time.
Extend the existing tracks that run parallel to Van Wyck to follow parallel to Grand Central with a switch over to "N" line in Astoria.
That was the original plan. Actually the Airtrain to Willets Point could still be a part of this. Simple merge the new trains together and have it go to Astoria Blvd.
I go through the Jackson Heights station several times a week and I almost never see airport passengers with luggage on the 7 train. Conversely, I see people with luggage on the Queens Blvd lines (E/F/R/M) all the time.
I often see people with luggage on the E train going to/from JFK via the Airtrain in Jamaica. I rarely see anyone getting off with luggage at Jackson Heights and then going upstairs to look for the LGA bus service.
Couldn’t they run some kind of Express 7 train to LGA that only make limited stops and have luggage racks?
They could, sure, since they already run express services, but the express service can only run in one direction at any time and there’s not much of a peak direction for the airport. Regardless, the 7 train is well-used even outside of peak hours and peak direction and this transfer at the second to last stop means that most travelers will be using up a significant amount of capacity to get to the transfer. There is the LIRR Port Washington branch which can be useful as an express service, but there isn’t a massive increase in Port Washington services on the docket especially anything being done about the single tracking the line has past Great Neck which greatly limits the frequency that could be run. Even with that, the densest part of that route, going westwards to Manhattan, runs roughly the same route as the 7 train. The two stops to the west are Woodside with a transfer to a 7 and then Penn Station near where the 7 train terminates. It’s next stop to the east is Flushing one block from the 7 train station.
I really, really want more transit infrastructure to be built in this city, but this plan is pretty dumb, plain and simple. It’s much too expensive and limited in use for what it is. It’s not a direct one-seater as one might expect when traveling to other major cities, and then on top of that, the necessary transfer is out of the way with limited transfer options since the two rail options mostly serve the same area.
It’s not even the best thing in regards to the cynical idea that this was driven to help developers at Willets Point—the truly most helpful thing in that regard would have been to shut down LGA entirely, slate it for redevelopment, and the removal of FAA building height caps. That’s also what I think should have been done instead of renovating LGA, but that ship has sailed.
The ship that hasn’t sailed yet is this airtrain. It should be axed. Either make a service with new tracks from Sunnyside Yards to LGA and hopefully beyond as a new NJT train turnaround variant or make a service from the Queens side of the current Hells Gate with a transfer stop in Astoria with N/W to LGA and hopefully beyond as a Triboro RX variant. These could be on top or below existing expressways for the most part and doing extensions of commuter rail at high frequencies means you can better leverage existing infrastructure and speedily place people at different transit nodes around the city. It’s essentially what every other major city does and it is effective.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 01-19-2020 at 05:44 PM..
Port Authority executive director responds to Queens elected officials and community’s concerns of LGA AirTrain
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