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| Re: Diagrams Re: Air Train question (581842) | |||
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Re: Diagrams Re: Air Train question |
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Posted by Terrapin Station on Thu Mar 6 13:09:46 2008, in response to Re: Diagrams Re: Air Train question, posted by Charles G on Thu Mar 6 12:04:38 2008. Those are certainly not the most direct routes for people without access to an automobile.they can use taxi / car service. Even for those with access to an auto and being dropped off at the airport, those coming from Brooklyn would find that the most direct route and least traffic would involve exiting the Belt at Cross Bay and being dropped off at the Howard Beach station. Looking at the map, it looks to be pretty similar either way. With one you have more local streets but less distance, with the other you stay on the highway a little but longer and have all major roads right to the Lefferts station, but it is a longer distance. And plus once you get out of the car, I'd think Lefferts is better. You go right into the front door of the airtrain station and right up the escalator. Where as at HB you have to get upstairs and then take the walk to the airtrain station. How can a pedestrian toll be bad transportation policy? Because the pedestrian toll discourages transit use! You have to pay the toll before you can get on the free circulator! Why is the fee "shady". Nobody is or was hiding it. They effectively are hiding it. Unless you read the website or find a brochure for it, you'd never know, from looking at the subway map, that there is a charge for AirTrain from HB. The yellow line is CLEARLY shown to be wholly on airport property, and no other airport in the country that I know of charges people to ride the on-property circulator as is the intent of the ped toll at HB. Never mind the fact that no transit system in the world that I know of has a station where the people who park get the fare waved but the people who walk in have to pay a fare. You don't buy it? Do you really think HB residents want hundreds or even thousands of cars per day exiting the Belt at Cross Bay and turning Coleman Square into an impromptu Kiss-and-Ride? I don't think it would. Lefferts seems to be the easier on/off than going to HB. The other reason presented was that there was no reason to build a second station in the long-term lot other than to serve the subway station. They currently use shuttle buses to serve the outer reaches of the lot and could certainly extend those shuttles to serve the small section of parking near where the HB subway station is. To the extent that the line cost more to go and additional 0.3 miles (some of it over swampland) and to build another station, why shouldn't those for whom it was built specially contribute more? Fares don't cover the building costs, AFAIK. They cover operating costs. Does it cost significantly more to operate from Lefferts to HB? Remember, the goal was to promote mass transit. Is it working? It seems not. So what was the point of building from Lefferts to HB? The blatant inequity argument holds no water. There are inequities everywhere, and you don't give any rationale why the PA would have malicious intent towards people who want to use the entrance from Howard Beach. No, there are no such inequities at any other transit station in the world, or at any other airport in the country, that I know of. This is very unorthodox. They don't have malicious intent per se. I think they just figured that this charge may have a chance of slipping by without major opposition, and that maybe if it did spark outrage, they could drop it later. |
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