https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3v5j3/us-airports-no-longer-have-to-build-their-own-crappy-trains
On January 12 (2021), a time when most of us were distracted by other events pertaining to the federal government, the Federal Aviation Administration updated some rules that will have huge implications for how travelers access airports via public transportation, and even for public transportation systems as a whole. It is also a correction for one of my pet peeves about U.S. public transportation, that we have spent decades building trains-to-the-trains to the airport. 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 do not have a name because they make no sense and have no good reason to exist. The train itself should just go to the airport, like they do in virtually every other airport with a mass transit connection in the world. These useless trains only exist because of byzantine bureaucratic rule that has condemned U.S. travelers to this crappy extra train for no good reason. And it's finally, finally, finally fixed.
To fully understand what's going on here, let's back up and talk about airport transportation. Most large international airports anywhere in the world have some type of "people mover" system, which can be anything from those weird and amazing mobile lounges at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C. to the automated trains more commonly found at airports these days (including also at Dulles). Airports have these when they are very large with terminals very far apart and even those moving walkways you are supposed to walk on and not just stand there for fuck's sake MOVE are not enough to get people around efficiently.
Generally speaking, there are two types of airport people movers. The first and most common from a global perspective are those designed to get people between terminals at massive international airports. The second and most common in the U.S. but virtually non-existent elsewhere are those that not only connect terminals but also the airport to rental car hubs and mass transportation. 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.
So: why? Why this extra train? It's because of this weird FAA rule.
In 1990, Congress passed the Aviation Safety and Capacity Expansion Act of 1990 which allowed airports, with the FAA's permission, to charge a small Passenger Facility Fee (PFC)—initially a maximum of $3 per ticket, later upped to $4.50 and, like the federal gas tax, not increased in the 20 years since despite losing much of its value to inflation—for airport improvements. The statute allows the revenue to be used for specific types of internal airport improvements only, such as people movers that stay within airport grounds. And in 2004 the FAA clarified that only rail lines which exclusively serve airports are eligible for PFCs.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MostCynical on Saturday June 29 2024, @12:00AM
I have never understood why it is so hard to move people around - yes, I know it is all about money.
Lobbyists and weird funding rules manage to cause pain all over the world - one major airport in Australia has a train line which stops close to, but not at the airport, because the taxi lobbyists have been very powerful; another Australian city has an airport with a train, but passengers have to pay a separate 'access fee', and the trains do not have anywhere to put luggage (like, say, London) they are just ordinary passenger trains.
Getting to an airport seems to always require going somewhere else first... like the old joke, a lots tourist pulls up to a farmer and asks how to get to a particular town, and the farmer replies "you can't get there from here"
Even when trains are designed as part of a greenfield airport, the connections are never direct to the main city centre..
One day we might get containerized mass transport - your carriage will go (with your luggage) where ever you need, without you needing to get out for modal changes..
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 29 2024, @12:28AM (1 child)
I'd say SFO's Air Train [wikipedia.org] is done right. You can't have that many airport stops on BART. The service is free, paid for in part by a tax on rental cars.
These things won't go away any time soon, for the same reason in many places. Putting a bunch of stops on the main line would suck. At the very least you need to transfer to a spur line. If they want to integrate in to the existing rail's fair system that's good though. They can just issue transfers now, like when you switch from train to bus for the last mile.
What's really terrible is the airports themselves. They're way too big and the layouts are miserable at times. I dread pickups at SFO. The airport I *love* for this is San Jose's Minetta. Absolutely beautiful, straightforward linear pickup and drop-off, only one level for either one. I've never felt like parking there, unless the plane was running late, never had a bad experience or spent time on the phone asking "where are you". I'm looking at you, Denver. Apparently, passengers can be easily confused about which level to come out on. At least security didn't hustle me off. They probably know it takes time to figure out for some people.
(Score: 3, Informative) by theluggage on Saturday June 29 2024, @12:20PM
I guess the example of that "working" (for a given value of "working") would be London Heathrow, where each of the 4 terminals has had London Underground and "overground" stations (but they're underground) for years - which also provide free "ground side" hops between terminals (but you still have to "buy" a free ticket or use a travel card, because the same services go on to central London which isn't free) - but there's a whole system of walkways and bus links for "airside" transfers which have to be kept separate for obvious reasons. Then there are separate shuttle busses (and one high-tech "pod" people mover) to car parks etc. and a dumpster fire of a (non-free) hotel shuttle service, none of which could be solved by mainline train stations... Oh, and there's a "terrible train" from Terminal 5 to the actual gates, too...
...but, yeah, anybody who happens to live by the Picadilly or, now, Elizabeth lines can get directly to the correct terminal - which is quite a lot of people in absolute terms, but a tiny proportion of the people who need to use LHR. For most, it still takes multiple trains to get to the terminal.
Still, it only makes sense because the terminals at LHR are quite widely scattered and inconveniently separated by runways and taxiways. - esp. T4 and 5 - because history. Nearly 2 miles as the crow flies from T4 to T5 (but the crow would probably get sucked into a jet intake on the way). Somewhere like SFO, with all the terminals in a nice ring - you could walk a complete circuit of the terminals in the time it would take to get across LHR by train.
I think TFA is convoluting the issue of who funds the connection of airports to national transport infrastructure with a red herring about intra-airport people movers - which have very different requirements.
Someone mentioned Schiphol - which is a nice example of joined-up thinking in that it was developed into a major international rail hub with trains going "everywhere". That's only going to happen with government involvement, because some of those train routes are effectively in competition with the airlines. Not sure how you get to the car rentals (its NL so probably by bike :-) )
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 29 2024, @01:01AM
The one that will never have a train connection to BART?
(Score: 4, Funny) by Zoot on Saturday June 29 2024, @02:24AM
THEEEEE COLOR-CODED-MAPSZZ-AND-SIGNS-IN-THIS-VEHICLEMATCHTHESTATIONCOLORS. PLEASE MOVE TO THE CENTER OF THE VEHICLE AND AWAY FROM THE DOORS.
STOP! DO NOT ENTER!
YOU-ARE-BEING-DELAYED-BECAUSE-SOMEONE-IS-INTERFERING-WITH-THE-CLOSING-OF-THE-DOORS.
RISE UP! EXPELL THEM!!!
EXTERMINATE!!! EXTERMINATE!!!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hendrikboom on Saturday June 29 2024, @03:19AM (3 children)
Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, last time I was there, had a train station at the bottom level of the airport.
The train was one of the regular transit lines that went through a few suburban stations and ended up at Centraal Station.
You paid the regular transit fare to use it.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Saturday June 29 2024, @04:44AM
There's a similar situation here, except there's a relatively long walk to the actual terminal, but at least it's level, covered and has a small tram that goes back and forth for the folks that can't it don't want to walk. The actual car rental places either have desks at the airport or their own shuttles.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Saturday June 29 2024, @07:55AM
The only other two arrangements besides hub-and-spoke that I've found that generally work well for large airports, both of which generally require at least some kind of terminal-terminal transit system, are linear and ring. Linear, where the terminal piers are arranged in a parallel lines, and often have a metro or mainline rail station landside of one the piers, can either use below-ground travelators or a vehicle transit system to interconnect, generally the former if it is just taxiways between the terminals, the latter if it is the runways. Ring tends to work best for airfields with a lot of vehicular traffic coming from different directions, as you position the terminals around the ends of the airport's runways and have a private circular metro (or bus, $deity forbid) to provide the interconnects. Again, at least one terminal would have usually have a landside connection to the local rail transit system.
The big difference with the US approach seems to be that in order for the people movers to connect to things like car parks/hire and mass transit, they have to be landside. All the internal transit arrangements above are entirely airside, which facilitates terminal-terminal movement for passengers connecting through as well as allowing for centralised check-in and baggage handling facilities, and the operational costs are passed onto the airlines as part of their gate fees, meaning you've already paid to use it as part of your flight ticket cost, so be sure to get your money's worth and go the long way round. :)
Any other generic designs out there people have found that work well, or are absolutely awful for that matter?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Saturday June 29 2024, @10:47AM
Cleveland has really one of the best airport rail connections I've had to deal with over the years. The train terminal is right next to the baggage claim. The train takes you fairly directly to the very middle of downtown, so if you're in town to go to a sporting event or a show or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or anything at the convention center you're within a few blocks of where you want to be. If you stay on the train through downtown, it takes you near several other places you might want to go: The city's largest university, their museums, the professional orchestra, top-tier hospitals, and some of the better Italian restaurants in the US.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by Jiro on Sunday June 30 2024, @05:31PM
The problem is that if you give a city money to do X, they like to use financial shenanigans to divert it towards things they want, rather than use it for the purpose it was given to them for. If you allow a city to use the funds for an airport line to make the regular transit system work better with the airport, the city will spend a lot of it on improvements to their transit system that are not really related to the airport, but where they can *just barely* make a plausible-sounding argument that they have something to do with the airport.
In the worst case, the city might even rely on the fungibility of money: they get given $x for airport transportation, and they use it on transport, but they also reduce the city transport budget by up to $x, spend the money they saved on something else, and say "see? We used the money you gave us on the airport like we promised. It's just too bad we had to cut the budget at the same time".
If the system serves the airport and nothing else and is not part of the regular transit system, it is impossible for the city to divert funds this way.