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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

#41

Post by Gravityloss »

jcranmer wrote: post #15
SeanLuke wrote: post #7

This 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…

I have twice been in a situation where I had to deplane by mobile lounge at Dulles. For your standard modern medium-haul airplane, it takes at least two mobile lounges to fully support the passenger load, and it's a decently crowded standing-room-only affair. Continuing the original vision, it's clear that passenger counts are absolutely incapable of supporting the "lounge" aspect of the mobile lounge design. You don…

Just add more lounges? Scale out horizontally?

Re: U.S. Airports No Longer Have to Build Their Own Terrible Trains

#42

Post by ghaff »

jameshart wrote: post #37
jcranmer wrote: post #11

> This unique type of U.S. transportation has no commonly-recognized name, and I will soon arbitrarily assign a term for them just to make everything easier. They're a kind of tram. I suspect the author is from New York, because the train-to-the-train of which he speaks largely doesn't exist in any other city in the US, and the concept of a two-car light rail-esque system seems astonishingly foreign to him. Especiall…

Boston Logan's 'Silver Line' (hybrid bus/trolleybuses using special dedicated tunnels) is its equivalent of the airport-only rail connection. The blue line 'airport' stop is literally over a mile from the checkin desks at Terminal B or C.

Of course, the Silver Line was basically designed for the purpose (in addition to providing a modicum of public transit in the developing Seaport area). As you say, the Blue Line just makes an East Boston stop in the general vicinity of the airport which may be closer than economy parking which is roughly in Canada.

Re: U.S. Airports No Longer Have to Build Their Own Terrible Trains

#43

Post by gammarator »

treis wrote: post #24

I'm pretty sure this guy has no idea what he's talking about. Every airport in the US in a city with a subway (or equivalent) has a station at the airport. Off the top of my head ATL, ORD, JFK, SLC, OAK all do. And the point of the plane trains is to move people between different terminals. I have less international airport experience but the only way they don't have them is if they use buses instead.

OAK is exactly the system the article describes: there’s a BART station far away at the Coliseum. To get to the airport you have to take a separate monorail that is slow and adds $6 to your fare: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coliseum%E2%80%93Oakland_Int...

Re: U.S. Airports No Longer Have to Build Their Own Terrible Trains

#44

Post by ghaff »

treis wrote: post #38
ghaff wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he's arguing that, with a different funding model, transportation between airport terminals would be integrated with the main transit systems. Which mostly works if the airport is at the end of the line--and, even so, it introduces some complications to the degree that intra-airport transportation is usually free.

That doesn't work because you would have to go through security when transferring between terminals.

And that's what you do at some airports. Even if there isn't a train post-security connecting terminals, at many airports, not all terminals are connected post-security.

Re: U.S. Airports No Longer Have to Build Their Own Terrible Trains

#45

Post by ghaff »

mbreese wrote: post #40
ghaff wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>San Francisco, SFO: BART stops at the airport terminals (although it does a funny Y setup to get in there). I'd call SFO a train to a train. There's one BART station (which as you say is sort of a spur off the main line--which is why it didn't originally exist as part of the BART system). I'm not sure if you can walk to the BART station from any terminal but in my experience you take the AirTrain. There's probably a…

But you don’t pay for the AirTrain, do you? I got the impression that this was the authors main gripe. I don’t think an airport having an internal transportation system is all that controversial.

"These second types, which I will continue to refer to as people movers for convenience, are frustrating as hell, as it requires travelers—to mention airport employees—to take a train to the train, an unnecessary and expensive transfer that typically requires a second fare."

He seems to be complaining about both the fee (which I assume is referring to EWR and/or JFK) and the need to transfer.

Re: U.S. Airports No Longer Have to Build Their Own Terrible Trains

#46

Post by CPLX »

treis wrote: post #24

I'm pretty sure this guy has no idea what he's talking about. Every airport in the US in a city with a subway (or equivalent) has a station at the airport. Off the top of my head ATL, ORD, JFK, SLC, OAK all do. And the point of the plane trains is to move people between different terminals. I have less international airport experience but the only way they don't have them is if they use buses instead.

Yeah no. Not one of the three giant airports in the NYC area has a local or regional train that stops in any terminal at all. It’s a disaster.

Re: U.S. Airports No Longer Have to Build Their Own Terrible Trains

#47

Post by Ichthypresbyter »

hef19898 wrote: post #25
m4rtink wrote: post #18

There was an interesting issue with a rail connection on the Narita International Airport serving Tokyo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narita_International_Airport#C... The airport was build in big style on the 60s on farmland forcefully bought from local farmers and should have been served by a Shinkansen high speed line directly from Tokyo station, making it's 50+ km distance from the city center an non-issue! Lets…

You don't need guerilla farmers to end up in a situation like that. MUC, the Munich airport, has two rather shitty metro lines connecting it to Munich. These lines aren't even direct ones, instead they have stops at every tree and milk bottle. Once they had a test with an ICE train stopping at the MUC metro train station. Worked like a charm. Well, but politicians wanted the Transrapid, so no conventional train conne…

What really confused me when I visited Munich is that those two S-bahn lines pass through the centre in opposite directions on their way to the airport.

The airport is northeast of the city. All of the S-bahn lines pass through the centre of the city in a roughly east-west direction, and all the central stations have two S-bahn platforms- one for trains going west, one for trains going east.

If you want to take the S-bahn to the airport from the central station, you either take the S8 going east (towards Karlsplatz) or the S1 going west (towards Hackerbruecke).

Re: U.S. Airports No Longer Have to Build Their Own Terrible Trains

#48

Post by Svip »

SeanLuke wrote: post #7

This 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…

I watched the video linked in the article, and I am not sure how they are different from buses? They seem to be completely custom built, making them expensive to maintain or of to build newer larger ones.

Edit: I think I realise now that the difference is that you save having to walk up a flight of stairs to the plane, thus you'll never actually be outside. That is neat, but I am not sure it is worth the expense.

Other airports have gates where the plane is somewhere else, and it's just buses picking you up, since the buses arrive like regular buses, they don't have to wait for the other one to reverse out. And since they are just buses, getting more buses is easy, and possibly a lot cheaper.

Re: U.S. Airports No Longer Have to Build Their Own Terrible Trains

#49

Post by SeanLuke »

chrismcb wrote: post #10
SeanLuke wrote: post #7

This 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.

Because Dulles had already been built prior to the need to redesign to provide the single point security design. I think there was no realistic way to add it after the fact and still retain the lounges attaching directly to the massive internal (effectively) one-room building.

Re: U.S. Airports No Longer Have to Build Their Own Terrible Trains

#50

Post by dhdhhdd »

SeanLuke wrote: post #7

This 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…

Those things are terrible. I had a tight connection, was first or second in this movable room, and waited for 25 minutes for it to start moving. Then there was a security screening in the place it moved to, for another dozens of minutes. Terrible.
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