A section of the 268′ long “La Guardia Vistas” at the airport
If you’re flying out of New York’s LaGuardia Airport, you won’t be able to take the train to the plane: The $2.1 billion AirTrain project to LaGuardia Airport’s brand new terminals has been scrapped by Governor Kathy Hochul.
The project, which was first proposed by then Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2014, was to be similar to the people mover, known as the AirTrain JFK, at John F. Kennedy International Airport, which is also in New York City.
The addition of the AirTrain was intended to be the finishing touch on what has been an $8 billion renovation of LaGuardia, which included the construction of a brand new and massive Central Terminal Building and a new Delta terminal. Both were designed to have AirTrain stations incorporated into them.
When Cuomo first announced the project, he said that the cost would be $450 million. Since then, it ballooned to over four times that much.
After Cuomo resigned from office in 2021, the plan began to face mounting opposition and Hochul, who served as Cuomo’s lieutenant governor and succeeded him, placed the project on hold and ordered a review.
On Monday, the results of an assessment ordered by the governor were released and the panel of transportation experts recommended the significantly less-expensive option of increasing public bus service to the airport and the addition of a shuttle between the airport and subway stations in northern Queens, a plan the governor said she would proceed with.
“I accept the recommendations of this report, and I look forward to its immediate implementation by the Port Authority in close coordination with our partners in the MTA, city and federal government,” Hochul said in a statement on Monday.
The recommendations will be implemented in two phases. The first phase will be an upgrade to the existing Metropolitan Transportation Authority Q70 LaGuardia Link bus service that connects the airport to Jackson Heights and Woodside, both in Queens. The plan calls for building a mile-long exclusive bus lane on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and increasing the frequency of service.
The second phase will see the introduction of new non-stop shuttles from LaGuardia to the last stop on the N/W subway line at the Astoria-Ditmars Boulevard station in Queens. That shuttle would stop at all three LaGuardia terminals and would utilize fully electric vehicles.
Before the AirTrain began service at JFK, that airport had the JFK Express, advertised as “The Train to the Plane,” with an accompanying jingle that went, “Take the train to the plane.” The JFK Express, which operated from 1978 through 1990, was a limited express service of the New York City Subway that connected Midtown Manhattan’s Sixth Avenue Line starting at the 57 Street-Sixth Avenue subway station.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
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