Backshophoss wrote: ↑Mon Jan 13, 2020 11:45 pm
It' high time to CLOSE LGA,it's so out moded that there's no Fix . Move the traffic to JFK.EWR.Westchester County and that
air cargo airport near Fishkill. LGA is now useless.
You seem to be arguing "it is so crowded, nobody goes there any more"
First, given that the airlines have spent / are spending something like $8b on new Terminal B and a new C (replacing C&D), (80% being the airline's financing) with
leases through the year 2050, you're not going to find anybody in government or industry to close LGA, ever.
Acela basically killed the NYC-PHL/BWI/DCA local air markets, but demand from further away quickly rushed in to fill the void. In a world where HSR would take all traffic to BUF, SYR, ROC, and BOS (and throw in Richmond, Harrisburg and Pittsburgh), that lost traffic would simply be replaced with longer flights (which is exactly what happened when the Chunnel bumped LGW/LHR and CDG/ORY/BRU out of the biggest cross-channel markets: the gates are redeployed)
I think the most you say about LGA's being obsolete is that the 1.3m people who fly LGA-BOS should take Acela instead, as a very narrow example. but even that is just 5% of LGA's traffic--about 2 years' growth. If life were fair, the Port Authority would contribute $500m to speed NYC-BOS train service (so it could use those gates to accommodate "must fly" markets like Chicago and Atlanta) but that's about it.
In 2019, (according to
https://www.transtats.bts.gov/airports.asp?pn=1)
LGA handled 28m passengers, up 2% (on 1.5% more departures)
EWR handled 32m passengers, up 0.5% (on fewer departures)
JFK handled 28m passengers, up 3% (on flat departures)
No way you're going to close 1/3 of the PANYNJ's capacity.
Meanwhile
HPN handled 1.6m (White Plains, Westchester)
ISP handled 1.5m (Islip, Long Island)
SWF handled 0.4m (Newburg area)
No way these are going to be able to pick up any of that slack...unless you're time horizon is really beyond 2050 and you have a plan to radically upsize these airports and radically improve access to the region's core.
Back to LGA. All 3 NYC airports are mostly growing by increasing the size of planes which is a pretty good formula for moving more people more reliably. The new LGA terminals seem mostly to have emphasized bigger seating areas so as to accommodate this trend.
Terminal A (the Marine Air Terminal, used by JetBlue for BOS and Florida flights) has been fairly sleepy the couple of times I've flown LGA-BOS on B6. (It has room to grow)
Terminal B (the "not Delta, not JetBlue" terminal) handled 15m and its
rebuild will be completed in 2020. I couldn't find the design capacity for the new terminal, but the old one was 8 million, so a doubling of throughput will clearly improve passenger experience.
Terminal C is the Delta-paid (lease until 2050) and handles "Delta's 40%" of the market
We can differ on how to connect LGA to Manhattan & Greater New York, but I don't think there's room to argue that LGA isn't worth connecting.
I think AOC's point is that from her district (Greater Harlem), LGA is vastly closer than having to go "downtown and out" and that the error for the Gov's AirTrain is that to get to LGA his way is "too far out before turning north"