U.S. Airports No Longer Have to Build Their Own Terrible Trains
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Re: U.S. Airports No Longer Have to Build Their Own Terrible Trains
#2What happens with the existing ones? We already have many large airports, and this article seems to imply new airports don’t have to do this.
Re: U.S. Airports No Longer Have to Build Their Own Terrible Trains
#3The funding angle aside, there are still reasons why large airports have their own "terrible trains" (and buses) to connect to the transit system. There's usually just one airport stop in any case, which in a major airport, may (or may not) be convenient to one or two terminals but will require some sort of separate transportation system from at least part of the airport.
Re: U.S. Airports No Longer Have to Build Their Own Terrible Trains
#4OMG. I'd long wondered why the US had so many of these ridiculous boondoggles (eg AirTrain JFK) and now I know.
Unfortunately this comes too late for one airport that has absolutely miserable public transport, since they're already building their $2 billion boondoggle:
Re: U.S. Airports No Longer Have to Build Their Own Terrible Trains
#5The funding angle aside, there are still reasons why large airports have their own "terrible trains" (and buses) to connect to the transit system. There's usually just one airport stop in any case, which in a major airport, may (or may not) be convenient to one or two terminals but will require some sort of separate transportation system from at least part of the airport.
Large airports outside the US often do have one station per terminal, or a station conveniently between two terminals. See eg London Heathrow, Tokyo Haneda, Tokyo Narita, Kuala Lumpur, Delhi and many more.
Re: U.S. Airports No Longer Have to Build Their Own Terrible Trains
#6> On January 12, a time when most of us were distracted by other events pertaining to the federal government
Oh Vice, so close to admitting they liked a Trump Administration policy, but won't say his name, before spending an entire article essentially thanking Trump for doing what Republicans are supposed to do -- removing a stupid regulation.
Re: U.S. Airports No Longer Have to Build Their Own Terrible Trains
#7This article mentions Dulles Airport's "mobile lounges", but doesn't explain their extraordinary history, which has absolutely nothing to do with the issues discussed in the article itself. [Dulles has no train connection yet].
If you've gone through DC's Dulles Airport, especially its international terminal, you may have experienced traveling in what must be described as a moving room, a kind of huge, wide bus. Long ago, these things were an experiment in a radical and wonderful 1960s approach to airport design which sadly couldn't work with our modern airport security.
The original design of Dulles airport was a single rectangular building: one huge atrium. There were no terminals at all, no gates at which airplanes parked. Airplanes stayed out on the tarmac somewhere. Instead, the building had an array of what might be best described as garage doors. When your flight was ready, a mobile lounge would drive over to a certain garage door and attach to it. The door would open and everyone on the flight would walk into the lounge. The lounge would then disengage and drive you over to the plane. There, it would lift vertically until it matched the plane door and attach to the plane. You'd then walk into the plane.
[Edit: yes, many european airports drive you out to the plane by bus: but you must still climb the entranceway to the airplane outdoors, and you must enter the bus in, well, traditional bus fashion. With the mobile lounges, it's as if you never went outdoors.]
It was an elegant and simple distributed system. Wikipedia says it failed because it couldn't keep up with passenger numbers: but I think, at least with Dulles Airport's one-single-massive-atrium-building design, it mostly failed because it was completely incompatible with a single-point bottleneck security line (sadly) required at modern airports. So the whole architectural design was doomed to failure. Over the years Dulles has grown terminals and security checks and underground passageways, and the lounges are now relegated to basically being buses between terminals.
Re: U.S. Airports No Longer Have to Build Their Own Terrible Trains
#8The funding angle aside, there are still reasons why large airports have their own "terrible trains" (and buses) to connect to the transit system. There's usually just one airport stop in any case, which in a major airport, may (or may not) be convenient to one or two terminals but will require some sort of separate transportation system from at least part of the airport.
Large airports outside the US often do have one station per terminal, or a station conveniently between two terminals. See eg London Heathrow, Tokyo Haneda, Tokyo Narita, Kuala Lumpur, Delhi and many more.
Some do. Mostly when they're at the end of the line because you're mostly not going to make a bunch of airport stops in the middle of a public transportation route such as in the case of San Francisco, say. Which didn't originally have a BART connection at all. (And Heathrow as I recall still needs a bus for Terminal 4.)
Re: U.S. Airports No Longer Have to Build Their Own Terrible Trains
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Large airports outside the US often do have one station per terminal, or a station conveniently between two terminals. See eg London Heathrow, Tokyo Haneda, Tokyo Narita, Kuala Lumpur, Delhi and many more.
Some do. Mostly when they're at the end of the line because you're mostly not going to make a bunch of airport stops in the middle of a public transportation route such as in the case of San Francisco, say. Which didn't originally have a BART connection at all. (And Heathrow as I recall still needs a bus for Terminal 4.)
Large modern airports tend to be at the end of the line, because few cities have the space to build them anywhere near the center anymore. Then again, Sydney is 15 min from the city center and has two stops, one each for the international and domestic terminals, on a line that continues far into the burbs.
Re: U.S. Airports No Longer Have to Build Their Own Terrible Trains
#10This article mentions Dulles Airport's "mobile lounges", but doesn't explain their extraordinary history, which has absolutely nothing to do with the issues discussed in the article itself. [Dulles has no train connection yet]. If you've gone through DC's Dulles Airport, especially its international terminal, you may have experienced traveling in what must be described as a moving room, a kind of huge, wide bus. Long…
Why do you think the"single point bottle neck " was the failure? While I disagree with the need for"modern security " surely you have your single point bottle neck to enter this large room. Once in the room, you are cleared and free to travel in the lounges.