American cities are the worst when it comes to this.
Seattle just built a train to the airport (yay) but for bureaucratic reasons, it doesn't actually go in to the airport. It goes to the far edge of the airport, so you have to lug your luggage outside through the entire parking lot.
Meanwhile, everyone who took an Uber can step right into the departures area.
And, as you mention, New York is much much worse in this regard. The AirTrain from JFK costs $5, more than it costs to go from anywhere to anywhere else in all of NYC on the subway.
> The AirTrain from JFK costs $5, more than it costs to go from anywhere to anywhere else in all of NYC on the subway
I'm okay with this. If I'm going to the airport, I'm identifying myself as a New Yorker (or visitor) with the means to travel by air. It doesn't make sense to use a minimum wage worker in the Bronx's taxes to subsidize my vacations.
Broadly, however, I agree that our lack of downtown-to-airport express rail lines is embarrassing.
Their employers should pay them more or buy them tickets. They've been pushing, instead, for a subsidy [1]. But at the end of the day, that's still using lower-income New Yorkers' wages to subsidize a system which principally (though not exclusively) benefits higher-income New Yorkers.
How are they "subsidizing" your vacations? That's one less dollar you're spending at the restaurants they work at or at the other businesses that employ them. So they're subsidizing the airport because the more you pay at the airport, the less you spend in the city. I'd rather spend that money in the local businesses than give the Port Authority another dollar they can squander.
Airport transit investments are, sadly, incredibly hard to justify. Since airports tend to be located in far-flung, less-populated parts of cities (or entirely outside of cities), it faces the deadly combination of being expensive to build (greater length/mileage of line) and having low ridership (relative to the rest of the transit system).
It's a highly salient point of failure for visitors, and generally is bad PR. But besides looking bad, it's not clear that investing in single-seat-to-terminal trains to the airports are actually the best use of very limited dollars.
The JFK AirTrain for example has a ridership of ~11,000 per day. There's an argument to be made that those riders have greater economic impact than average, but ultimately that ridership resembles some of the more far-flung residential neighborhood subway stations (see: Graham St L, Bergen St F, 145th St 1 in Harlem, etc).
Compare that with parts of the system that are in dire need of maintenance/renovation with much greater ridership (see: Herald Square - 125,000 riders a day, Union Square - 106,000 riders a day, Times Sq - 202,000 riders a day).
In a world where costs are under control and funding abundant, I am all in on airport links, but right now? Right now I'm not convinced this is where money should be going, as much as it sucks for someone who flies a lot like me.
> Airport transit investments are, sadly, incredibly hard to justify.
Somehow other countries manage to justify it. Tokyo, London, Paris (TGV too!), Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Beijing... the list goes on. But somehow building infrastructure is hard to justify in the US. Pennywise and pound foolish.
Very few of those places built the airport extension first, or spent the entire bank account on just the airport extension. Given limited dollars, airports are at best a middling concern.
A combination of low appetite for taxes, poor spending, and the disadvantages of being the first movers when it comes to infrastructure.
China is able to rapidly build infrastructure because it didn’t have very much. In twenty to fifty years when everything is dur for replacement, that will be the true test of infrastructure.
The AirTrain has so few riders because it fucking sucks, this phenomenon doesn't require detailed analysis.
NYC can and should build trains that go from dense center city locations right into airport terminals. Like real countries do. If they did they would be wildly popular.
The problem is that there is little remaining rail capacity into New York as it is and it would almost certainly be more productively used for commuters rather than occasional travelers.
It's a good question - and we can gain some insight by looking at cities with much better rail service to their airports.
The baseline is the JFK AirTrain, which carries 11,000 riders per day, out of an estimated total of 5.6M daily subway riders (not counting commuter rail), against a total flyer volume of ~60M a year.
The Heathrow Express, which does take you straight to the terminal, for example carries about 17,000 riders per day, out of an estimated 7M total daily Tube riders (not counting commuter rail), against a total flyer volume of ~78M a year.
Another data point: the BART SFO station (also direct-to-terminal) carries about 6,500 riders per day, out of an estimated total 423,000 daily riders system-wide, against a total flyer volume of ~50M a year.
It's not all doom and gloom - we also know that Narita Airport was able to double its proportion of passengers arriving/departing by rail by improving service. But even if the same results can be replicated in the US - the baseline numbers are so low that the increased ridership would still represent one of the smallest parts of the overall transit system.
FWIW I'm one of the beneficiaries of these rail links, and I'm very grateful they exist - but these projects are ultimately more about signaling/politics/PR than they are about shrewd allocation of infrastructure spending.
About the Heathrow Express. Its ridership is low because the Piccadilly Line (1 of London's busiest lines) also terminates at Heathrow Airport. Most people I know take the Piccadilly Line instead of the Heathrow Express to the airport to save money.
Yeah, Heathrow Express makes sense if you're ending up near Paddington but otherwise I don't really understand it. If there are a couple of you with luggage, get a car and it's door-to-door. Otherwise take the tube and save a bunch of money. I go to London a lot and mostly take the Piccadilly Line or sometimes a cab at off-hours or from inconvenient locations. But I honestly don't understand why the Heathrow Express would be interesting outside of a narrow range of circumstances.
BART SFO is technically direct to terminal but only because you change to a specific spur line. This is similar to the JFK air train and seems designed to support the taxi union. Each such change cuts the number of poss Le riders dramatically, especially when lugging bags.
I take BART to and from SFO all the time. But then I'm essentially always just with carry-on. Pretty much any public transit from airports (with the possible exception of busses explicitly set up for the purpose) aren't a great fit for travelers lugging a bunch of suitcases.
The arrangement at Rome Ciampino Airport is pretty silly: there's a railway line running next to it, with a station about 300 metres from the runway. But the entrance to the airport is on the other side, on the motorway!
To get from the station to the airport, you need to take a bus or a taxi round half the perimeter of the airport. Which, if you don't have long before your flight, and the bus drives off before you board, leaving several passengers fighting over the handful of taxis in this tiny town, can be quite stressful, i can assure you.
What's worse is that airport _workers_ have to pay additional for the AirTrain I think there's a discounted rate now, but I'm pretty sure workers had to pay $5 at one time. I did some work with the PA in the mid 00s and someone I worked with told me that he still had to pay $5 when the AirTrain first opened.
Seattle just built a train to the airport (yay) but for bureaucratic reasons, it doesn't actually go in to the airport. It goes to the far edge of the airport, so you have to lug your luggage outside through the entire parking lot.
Meanwhile, everyone who took an Uber can step right into the departures area.
And, as you mention, New York is much much worse in this regard. The AirTrain from JFK costs $5, more than it costs to go from anywhere to anywhere else in all of NYC on the subway.