4 ms·

They need to just shut down the LaGuardia airport and sell the land off for development. It's silly to have 3 airports that close together, creating the busies

They need to just shut down the LaGuardia airport and sell the land off for development. It's silly to have 3 airports that close together, creating the busiest airspace in the US, especially when LGA is such a small (and old and crappy) airport anyway. Shut it down, expand service at Newark and JFK, and then improve the mass-transit service to both of those so people don't need to spend a bunch of money on stupid cabs just to get in or out of NYC by air.

joelrunyon 11y ago
Upvotes for expanding the transit options to both. It's absolutely embarrassing NYC doesn't have better ways to get to any of the three airports.
- apaprocki 11y ago
  It's funny to me because most people I know would prefer to get in a car and gamble with sitting in traffic rather than take the easy, almost always on time subway (e.g. E train) + AirTrain to JFK. From midtown it is always 45 minutes door to terminal, but people avoid it for some reason because... ? It isn't a sparkly white JFK train that terminates in Manhattan? Newark is served by train from Penn Station, already a massive hub, that gets you there in 15 minutes.
  - joelrunyon 11y ago
    Chicago has great service to both airports. ~30 minutes to both o'Hare and Midway. So much better than dealing with the headache of a cab.
  - Grishnakh 11y ago
    Why do they need to have a special train for each airport? What's so hard about putting them on the regular subway system so people don't need to pay a high fare and waste a lot of time in transfers and walking between stations with a ton of luggage? Have you even been to Penn Station? It's not a short walk from the trains to the subway. That's probably why a lot of people prefer cars.
krschultz 11y ago
I'm with you that LGA is crappy, but it's not that small. It's the 20th busiest airport in the United States, and handles 23% of the total NYC air traffic. Neither EWR nor JFK have enough spare capacity to pickup that slack. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports_i...
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  Well in that case, they should expand the other two. Things would probably be a lot more efficient in that airspace too after downsizing to only two airports.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    If you end up with the same amount of traffic as before, just at two airports instead of three, how does it make the airspace more efficient?
    - Grishnakh 11y ago
      Better centralization. Having three control towers having to coordinate traffic between them is more chaotic than two or one. And it's more orderly to have planes coming in to fewer sets of runways.
      - mikeash 11y ago
        Having TRACON work with three towers instead of two doesn't sound any more difficult. I thought that the towers mostly just took already-sequenced traffic from TRACON and landed them, and handed departing traffic off to TRACON once they left the runway. As for fewer sets of runways, that sounds harder to me, not easier, since you have more traffic coming into the airport and that traffic has to be sequenced and deconflicted with all the other traffic coming into that particular airport. I could be wrong on this, my interactions with ATC are limited to occasionally listening to DCA tower while watching the planes land, and every so often being the point of contact to call the local TRACON to notify them of our glider operations.

joelrunyon 11y ago

Upvotes for expanding the transit options to both. It's absolutely embarrassing NYC doesn't have better ways to get to any of the three airports.

apaprocki 11y ago
It's funny to me because most people I know would prefer to get in a car and gamble with sitting in traffic rather than take the easy, almost always on time subway (e.g. E train) + AirTrain to JFK. From midtown it is always 45 minutes door to terminal, but people avoid it for some reason because... ? It isn't a sparkly white JFK train that terminates in Manhattan? Newark is served by train from Penn Station, already a massive hub, that gets you there in 15 minutes.
- joelrunyon 11y ago
  Chicago has great service to both airports. ~30 minutes to both o'Hare and Midway. So much better than dealing with the headache of a cab.
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  Why do they need to have a special train for each airport? What's so hard about putting them on the regular subway system so people don't need to pay a high fare and waste a lot of time in transfers and walking between stations with a ton of luggage? Have you even been to Penn Station? It's not a short walk from the trains to the subway. That's probably why a lot of people prefer cars.

krschultz 11y ago

I'm with you that LGA is crappy, but it's not that small. It's the 20th busiest airport in the United States, and handles 23% of the total NYC air traffic. Neither EWR nor JFK have enough spare capacity to pickup that slack. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports_i...

Grishnakh 11y ago
Well in that case, they should expand the other two. Things would probably be a lot more efficient in that airspace too after downsizing to only two airports.
- mikeash 11y ago
  If you end up with the same amount of traffic as before, just at two airports instead of three, how does it make the airspace more efficient?
  - Grishnakh 11y ago
    Better centralization. Having three control towers having to coordinate traffic between them is more chaotic than two or one. And it's more orderly to have planes coming in to fewer sets of runways.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      Having TRACON work with three towers instead of two doesn't sound any more difficult. I thought that the towers mostly just took already-sequenced traffic from TRACON and landed them, and handed departing traffic off to TRACON once they left the runway. As for fewer sets of runways, that sounds harder to me, not easier, since you have more traffic coming into the airport and that traffic has to be sequenced and deconflicted with all the other traffic coming into that particular airport. I could be wrong on this, my interactions with ATC are limited to occasionally listening to DCA tower while watching the planes land, and every so often being the point of contact to call the local TRACON to notify them of our glider operations.