Getting to LaGuardia Airport the right way

There’s a better way to get to LaGuardia Airport, and we still have time to do something about it. In a previous century, I led the design of the JFK AirTrain stations. At that time, our idea was that when travelers arrived at an AirTrain station — be it at Jamaica via the Long Island Rail Road or Howard Beach via the subway — they would feel like they were at an airport terminal and just need to get to their gate. For institutional reasons, we were not able to provide the idealized “one-seat ride” from Manhattan all the way to a terminal. So we extended the airport out to meet existing transit infrastructure.

Although for the most part it has been successful, today there remain some annoying hurdles for travelers. The lack of true interoperability of the fare-card for AirTrain, the LIRR and the subway, and the various options to get to Manhattan and the other boroughs continue to befuddle arriving passengers.

For a train to LaGuardia, we can and must do better than replicating JFK AirTrain. I say this as someone who takes pride in his work but is also honest about shortcomings. Here, we can do better.

The concept for transit to LaGuardia, championed by former Gov. Cuomo, is that when you arrive at Willets Point, you will be in the airport environment. And via a series of train and moving walkway connections, you will get through security and to your gate. But critics correctly point out that the LIRR station at Willets Point is not accessible from any LIRR lines serving Eastern Long Island, and that Willets Point is already a bottleneck for Mets games at Citi Field and the U.S. Open at Flushing Meadows. They’re also right that building a line going east from the airport for what can only be seen as a connection to Manhattan, which is west, seems circuitous and counter-intuitive.

In contrast to JFK, LaGuardia is New York’s “city airport.” Like Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station, there is no customs or immigration, and flights are generally limited to a maximum distance of 1,500 miles.

Rather than extend the “airport brand” into the city, why not extend the “NYC brand” to the airport?

Why not take the approach of better integrating the airport into the existing transportation infrastructure, including the subway system and the city’s bicycle network? By extending the subway to the airport terminals, and connecting protected bike paths to the area, LaGuardia could be part of a vibrant new district of the city. Imagine the stories a visitor from Toronto or Pittsburgh would take home after being able to jump on the subway from LaGuardia and be in Times Square in 25 minutes, for $2.75 or less. Or even jump on a Citibike to visit a friend in Harlem or Long Island City in about the same amount of time.

Toronto has a small airport where you can literally walk through an underground walkway and be right in the heart of the city. LaGuardia will never be quite that, but it can borrow from that spirit.

It may not be that difficult, relatively speaking, to extend the N train from its current end-of-line stop at Ditmars Blvd. northeast to the airport. Yes, this was tried before, some 25 years ago, and met fierce community opposition based largely on historic perceptions of the disruptive influence of existing elevated subways.

But that was then. Now, after construction of the JFK AirTrain guideway and similar structures, the fear that elevated tracks would be noisy, dark and difficult to maintain is no longer warranted. In addition, there is a new reason to extend the N train through the area west of the airport: a potential new destination for the public, called Rikers Island.

Rikers has always been difficult to get to, frustrating the efforts of visitors to (mostly unsentenced) inmates and jail staff alike. But now there is a real likelihood that, with the city’s borough-based jails program, the island will be available for other uses and perhaps become a new destination for city residents and visitors. Connecting to Rikers and nearby areas would increase ridership on the subway as well. The public’s investment in transportation infrastructure should be leveraged to do more than provide a single-purpose connection to LaGuardia, especially one of questionable efficacy. We can get more value for more people by making our transportation systems serve more uses and open more opportunities.

It’s time to extend the city’s existing transportation systems to connect not just the airport but new destinations and development to the west of it. Doing so would support the uniquely New York public realm of city streets, and make LaGuardia part of the city’s next great neighborhood.