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The problem is that you get stuck in a local maximum. Nobody really wants to be at an airport. They are located on the outskirts of cities due to noise issues,

• nrr 3y ago
  To get an answer your question, consider the PI on a grant who's located in, say, Champaign, IL, or Carbondale, IL, and who needs to fly internationally to attend a conference. (Or, perhaps more direly, needs to attend some family emergency.) With rail alignments going, say, STL-CHM-CHI and STL-CDL-NVL, and with those alignments being wallclock time-competitive with just driving, the opportunity exists now for those PIs not to have to worry about, e.g., the roadworthiness of their cars or whether they'll have to account for traffic for the two- or three-hour commute to the airport. Extend this to cover other folks who live away from major metropolises but who could be served with better airport access, or college students from those metropolises (or even internationally) whose schools are in places not particularly conveniently served by air, and this plan might start to appear to do measurable good. To compare this with Europe, flying into FRA out of ORD (after a cramped puddle jumper flight out of STL and several hours' layover) and taking the ICE to Offenburg to visit family for Easter was a thing I did for years, and I found the German side far less agonizing. There were some years when I never even bothered to purchase my Bahn fare until I could get to the DB Reisezentrum in the basement of FRA because the frequency of the trains made it certain I'd not have to wait long.
• prmoustache 3y ago
  Isn't that because bar a few exceptions, US cities do not have an historical "city center" in the same sense as cities in europe and latin america?
• firesteelrain 3y ago
  Link: https://www.orlandoairports.net/parking-transportation/ https://www.orlandoairports.net/parking-transportation/ Orlando (MCO) has: Local public Lynx buses with red color at front - are located At Terminal A, level 1, at Commercial Lane spaces A38-A41 and serve the following areas: (current bus fare is $2): - To Downtown Orlando (40 mins): Lynx bus 11 via Orange Avenue; Lynx bus 51via Conway; - To International Drive (60 mins): Lynx Bus 42 . - To Forida Mall /Sea World (45 mins): Lynx bus 111. - To new Sand Lake Road SunRail Station* (3 miles from Airport): take the local Lynx bus stopping at Terminal A, level 1, at Commercial Lane spaces A38-41. Local buses are also available to Winter Park/ Maitland; Lake Buena Vista, Kissimmee, Disney's Maingate, & Walt Disney World. (Not counting all of the hotel buses or cruise ship buses) * Uber and Lyft near infinite transport in addition to taxi’s By Train: * The SunRail runs between DeBary (northwest of Sanford) and Sand Lake Road) For more information on SunRail service call 1-855--RAIL-411 or visit: sunrail.com/default.aspx. NOTE: The Lynx bus located on the A-side of the Terminal, at level 1, commercial lane spaces A38-A41 - connects to the Sand Lake Road SunRail station. For Amtrak service located at 250 Columbia Street, Orlando - 12 miles from the Airport - you can take the Lynx bus 11 to Orange Avenue & Columbia Street - taking a total of 30 minutes. The Amtrak station is about half a mile from the bus stop, down Columbia Street, then left onto Sligh Blvd. - this is in addition to the new BrightLine * By Car - Personal travel, rental car, guests picking you up or local parking lots both on premises and off premises (private lots) I don’t think Orlando and Zurich compare. Are you going to walk off the Orlando airport to somewhere else without being on some sort of transportation? No. But you aren’t going to do that at Oslo airport either. You need to take a train or bus for example to Oslo Central Station or elsewhere - similar to Zurich.
  • pimlottc 3y ago
    Unfortunately it doesn't look like the bus and train stations are that close together. Local buses stop at Terminal A, while the train pulls in to the new intermodal station off Terminal C [1], almost a mile away. At least there's an automated people mover connecting them, but it hardly seems like a convenient interchange. Buses are not even marked on the airport terminal map, which is split into separate maps for terminals A & B [2] and C [3]. That's going to make things more challenging for people to figure out. 1: https://www.orlandoairports.net/getting-around-mco/train-station/ https://www.orlandoairports.net/getting-around-mco/train-sta... 2: https://www.orlandoairports.net/getting-around-mco/#map-wayfinding-ab https://www.orlandoairports.net/getting-around-mco/#map-wayf... 3: https://www.orlandoairports.net/getting-around-mco/#map-wayfinding-c https://www.orlandoairports.net/getting-around-mco/#map-wayf...
• ciabattabread 3y ago
  The next phase of the train is to the Orlando Convention Center / Universal Studios, then to Disney World, and eventually to Tampa.
• tzs 3y ago
  Why not do both? Have the train have stops both downtown and at an airport? If you just want to do stuff downtown that doesn't need a car, take the train to that stop. If you are going to need to rent a car, take the train to the airport.
  • crote 3y ago
    Depends on the opportunity cost, really. If stopping at the airport adds 15-20 minutes to the trip to downtown, it probably isn't worth it and you want to run separate trains. On the other hand, the high-speed train going to Amsterdam Zuid via the shortest possible route literally passes through the airport Schiphol already - a stop only adds 2 minutes or so and is therefore a no-brainer.