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Comment by camillomiller | Hacker News Reader

New York's transport is baffling to me. The lack of a proper subway or special express train option to get quickly to the airports is doubly baffling. I guess the cross-state jurisdiction is one of the issues with Newark, but the AirTrain solution over at JFK is way subpar if compared to other major cities. I've been there twice in a few months and it's simply a disaster. 2.5 hrs by car to get to Newark from Williamsburg at 2pm on a Friday. I wonder what rush hour looks like.

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What are you talking about?

From Penn St you take the NJ Transit train to Newark airport, or the LIRR train to Jamaica where you transfer to the AirTrain which brings you to your desired terminal at JFK.

LaGuardia doesn't have a train option though.

But yeah, taking a car from Newark to Williamburg in the afternoon, I guess you've learned not to do that again. :) NJ Transit is your friend.

From Manhattan, you need to take 3 trains to get to EWR. Subway, Path (NJT), shuttle.

LGA: None

JFK: Subway,AirtRain

Compare this with HKG or LHR, it is pathetic.

I'm very familiar with NYC's options and with LHR. You compare JFK with LHR, not EWR or LGA (I suppose you'd compare EWR to Gatwick and LGA to City). To get to any reasonable business destination in London (City) area, you take Heathrow Express and then transfer to at least 1 or more tube. That is directly analogous to taking the AirTrain to an express train. When I leave my office on 59th & Lex, I walk to the 53rd street subway station and I'm at Terminal 8 in JFK in exactly 50 minutes, consistently. How is that any worse than LHR?

Just like when you're booking a ticket to/from "London", you don't pick Luton if you really mean Heathrow. If my destination was Williamsburg I would pick LGA if at all possible, otherwise JFK. Picking EWR and having to go across the city is not a good plan to start with.

True, but business trip, I wasn’t booking personally

nitpick: PATH != NJT. PATH is run by the Port Authority. NJT commuter rail is what connects to EWR AirTrain.

Also, don't take the subway to/from JFK, take LIRR it's like 40 minutes faster.

That should be PATH || NJT as you can take NJT directly to the tram.

I’m comparing it to Berlin, where I live. The metropolitan area is larger and the airport (sxf) farer from the center. You can get there with a regional train that you can get from Central Station (Hauptbanhof), Friedrichstrasse or Alexanderplatz (then a couple more eastern stations). Transit time in rush hour is max 45 mins. Tegel is even easier, it’s basically inside the city. 25 minutes tops by car from any area in North Berlin. Max. 45 mins with metro+bus from everywhere else within the metro area. Yeah, I’m spoiled I guess. Now if we could only have a major modern airport on top of this it’d be nice, but that’s another story

Huh? NJTransit (train and bus) goes directly to Newark, and the last time I rode the AirTrain to JFK I had no problems. This is compared to other cities where I had to take a shuttle from the nearest train station to get to the airport...

NYC's airport transit isn't as good as other cities (Tokyo, Toronto, etc) but nobody who lives in New York would make that trip by car at that time. They'd fly from LGA or JFK or take the car.

Apparently helicopter is also an option for the slightly richer. Not even 1%ers, it’s like 250$ from manhattan to jfk

L train -> 2,3 train -> Penn Station -> Newark in 15 minutes. This is where the plethora of apps out there really help if you're not intimately familiar with these options.

Also, people should not be afraid of the connecting M60 bus when taking the subway en route to LaGuardia.

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