Great news! It would be nice if it had a rail connection
http://patch.com/new-york/parkslope/...lion-makeover?
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced plans on Monday to completely tear down and rebuild LaGuardia Airport (LGA) in Queens.
“There is no way to fix this. We need to literally tear it down and rebuild it,” Cuomo said at a press conference.
“LaGuardia Airport is un-New York,” he said. ”It’s slow, dated and a terrible entranceway to New York — a lost opportunity. For New York, it is time to move and get it done.”
Under the plan, LaGuardia’s current terminals would apparently stay open and operational during construction, and would only be torn down upon completion of the new structure, which is being built about 600 feet away. (We’ve reached out to Cuomo’s office to confirm.)
According to Cuomo, the first half of the construction project will cost $4 billion and is slated to begin in early 2016, following final approval by the Port Authority’s board of commissioners.
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Last edited by GordonGecko; July 27th, 2015 at 06:42 PM.
Great news! It would be nice if it had a rail connection
Getting dropped off at the East River is hardly helpful.
An airtrain will eventually link the airport to Shea stadium/Transit.
The airport looks pretty good. The design is fine, nothing amazing, but modern and sleek. I'm glad Delta is not keeping their old aging terminals and the whole thing will be one major new facility. The space is limited so the design seems to make good use of the available land.
LaGuardia is constrained in capacity, and many people would have preferred to see it shut for the sake of airspace congestion relief which prevents other airports from fulfilling their destinies. That is something that is probably not for another generation or more if ever now.
Last edited by futurecity; July 27th, 2015 at 11:24 PM.
30 Years overdue. It will be interesting to see how bad traffic from there will be during reconstruction.
I can validate Biden's assertion about the quality of this airport as I have seen much nicer, better, more convenient airports in third world countries and all other major cities in USA/Canada.
Three things that I think should be reconsidered....
1) Get rid of that "Welcome to New York" pasture and put another parallel runway; SFO has one, so its feasible, and would really alleviate landing and takeoff traffic.
2) Need at least 2 more terminal's gates spurs to accommodate the inevitable growth that would render this effort moot in a couple of decades.
3) Save $$ and time; have Airtrain leave from Astoria, not Willets point, which would overshoot the Airport by 2 miles (why would commuters want to take the longer way there??)
No need get fancy here.... Clean/sleek/efficient. If I ever believed in minimalists architecture to be acceptable and applied where it doesn't sap morale, it is here.
Won't building it closer mean more congestion on the Grand Central? On extra-busy airport days, traffic going into the airport may back up onto the highway.
If we are going to spend $4B on an airport, can we at least bring back the beautiful old observation tower? The new giant tin can has got to go.
The 7 train has to be the least reliable in the city. They regularly shut it down weekends to work on the elevated track because they can't work on it over night.
Last edited by treebeard; July 30th, 2015 at 06:41 PM. Reason: mis typed word
I would say the opposite, that's it one of the most reliable. Recently they have been doing a lot of off peak maintenance, but there's a cross-platform transfer at Queensboro Plaza to the N/Q.
But this whole airtrain to willets point idea is inefficient and people do not want it. People want an air train to Astoria at the very least, which they could do by building entirely above the Grand Central like they did above Van Wyck. It would be nice if they could just figure our a way to develop a one seat train to midtown somehow
Two things they need to do, but aren't
1). Get rid of the intersecting runways. This is a huge cause of congestion. Make two parallel runways on 13-31 orientation and close 4-22. 4-22 is the runway that interferes with JFK. Also make both of these runways longer than the current 7,000' length.
2). Build an extension to the N line that splits off at Astoria Blvd, and runs over the Grand Central Parkway into the airport. It's ridiculous that you cant take a subway right to an airport in NYC.
There is literally no space to build new runways. LaGuardia was built in a time when the surrounding areas were in its infancy. It's now jam-packed in between a bustling neighborhood and a prison.
Secondly, NIMBY's are nixing any plans to extend the N past Astoria-Ditmars, which is a shame since it is a very good idea. The proposed AirTrain LaGuardia connection to Willets Point connects commuters to the 7 (which eventually connects them to the N and midtown) and the future retail/residential neighborhood, and the Long Island Railroad.
Last edited by BStyles; August 2nd, 2015 at 08:59 AM.
I certainly want it. People will ride it.
That would probably be impossible. NIMBYs would fight an elevated segment, so you would have to build full subway to Astoria, which would cost megabillions. And Astoria doesn't have LIRR like Willets Point. Airtrain is supposed to feed subway and suburban rail. Astoria also doesn't have sufficient subway capacity.
Nice, but probably impossible. Airtrain is the best real-world option.
Astorians are not stupid. They have seen what happened on the Upper East Side. They do not want decades and decades of construction, because that's how long it would take to build a subway to LGA from the first shovel to revenue service. Some call it NIMBYism, others realize that subway construction is a corrupt endeavor that just no longer makes sense in NYC due to a variety of factors.
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