Thursday, July 24, 2008

Air Train free not today, but tomorrow

The AirTrain will be free for a day Thursday in honor of the 60th birthday of John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Passengers were happy to hear they won't have to fork over the usual $5 fare to travel to or from the Howard Beach subway station or the Long Island Rail Road's Jamaica station.

About 14,000 people a day ride the "Jetsons"-style train, meaning the Port Authority will lose about $70,000 in revenue from the free day.


All aboard! Free JFK AirTrain Thursday

This is misleading, because it's really free tomorrow.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Does anyone take this train to begin with?

Anonymous said...

Yes. Just take a look at the area around Lefferts Blvd and the Belt Pkway or near the Howard Beach Subway Station. Watch and see all the airport employees who won't use employee parking lots drive to the airport fringe and park all over residential streets. That's where many of the cars Airtrain was supposed to get off the road are. Biggest culprits...the federal TSA employees.

Anonymous said...

Uhhhhh... I take the Airtrain daily to get from Howard Beach to Jamaica to connect to the LIRR.

They weren't giving any free rides as of 7:30-8:00 this morning. Still making people buy cards and swipe to exit.

Someone's been misinformed.

I don't care because I have a monthly... But there were a ton of travellers this morning that were basically ripped off because of agents that are making them pay despite what the Port Authority claims is a free ride day....

Anonymous said...

This happens on the day most of the flights out of JFK are either delayed or cancelled.

Great timing, jerkoffs.

Anonymous said...

The freebie takes place on Friday, not today.

Ridgewoodian said...

ANONYMOUS: Does anyone take this train to begin with?

Yes. When I have to get to or from JFK.

Anonymous said...

Wasnt it Gothum airport for over 30 years ?

Kind of sad why it was named JFK International.

Named JFK after Kennedys Immigration Act of 1965 that dropped the bar on who the hell we let in this country.

The renamed JFK International became the 1st gateway for importing 3rd tweedys via airplane.
NYC became bankrupt slum by 1971 requiring the Big Mack bond bailout.

Ridgewoodian said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ridgewoodian said...

-JOE: Wasnt it Gothum airport for over 30 years?

No. When construction began in 1942 it was called Idlewild Airport. According to the Wikipedia it was briefly “General Alexander E. Anderson Airport," but I haven’t seen that anywhere else. Soon after it opened for business in 1948 it was renamed New York International Airport, although it was commonly called “Idlewild” and its IATA code was IDL. On Christmas Eve, 1963, it was rededicated as John F. Kennedy International Airport, in memory of the President who had been assassinated a few weeks earlier. (Interestingly, its initial IATA code was the ghoulish KIA, which was changed to the more familiar JFK in 1968.) It’s had its current name for longer than any other. Perhaps there could have been a deserving New Yorker that it could have been named for – apparently General Anderson didn’t make the grade – but if Reagan can have an airport after firing all the air traffic controllers JFK having one doesn’t offend me. I haven’t found any references to a “Gothum” or Gotham airport.



-JOE: Named JFK after Kennedys Immigration Act of 1965 that dropped the bar on who the hell we let in this country.

No. As was stated above, the airport was renamed in late 1963, well before the 1965 Immigration Act. JFK apparently did support reform of the exclusionary 1924 immigration law but by 1965 he was more than a year in his grave. His brother, Ted, was a major sponsor of the legislation in the Senate. It passed overwhelmingly in both houses, was signed by President Johnson – who apparently saw it as a companion piece to the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act – and went into effect in July, 1968.



-JOE: NYC became bankrupt slum by 1971 requiring the Big Mack bond bailout.

Amazing that a city could be turned into a bankrupt slum in a mere two and a half years. Most social changes take a lot longer than that. Perhaps there were other forces at work aside from immigration? The 1970s was a bad decade for New York – crime, near bankruptcy, disastrous loss of population. It was a similarly bad decade for many North Eastern cities. New York has bounced back (while most of its former peer-cities haven’t); how would you explain that?

Anonymous said...

I dont have to explain it

I never considerd New York "Bounced Back" after the reform act and Big Mac.
It became a city of greedy corperations and dickheads making $$$ off all the new people.

The native middle class Joe Shmoe and Archie Bunker continue to pay for the the tweeds and take it up the backside with only 2 choices.
1-Put up with it.
2-Move
----and many did.

Take a look at Dekalb and Evergreen where I came from. It was once a paradise turned into a slum in 2 years thanks to the Kennedys.

Manhatten was sold block by block, and now pigs like Bloomberg want Queens via any means they can kick every native out and take it.


The block is still a slum in 2008 and I dont consider Times Square being turned into Disneyland with $300 theater tickets, IATSE shaftings and brawls an improvement eather.



-Joe

Anonymous said...

Manhatten


You spell like a wet back...Joe

Anonymous said...

I have an old Hagstrom road map which has an airport listed as "Jamaica Sea Airport" in what would now be the Southeastern section of present-day JFK. It appears to be a canal to accomodate seaplanes about 7 block lengths long and 5 block widths wide. There's no date on the map, but it has the J train as a "subway line under construction", so It must be 1915-1916.

Anonymous said...

Tomorrow, eh? Will have to check that out on my way to work and will report back to you.

Anonymous said...

All turnstiles wide open and turned off.

Free AirTrain today :)

Seems like that concept is confusing the tourists more than the MVM's

Ridgewoodian said...

-JOE: It became a city of greedy corperations and dickheads making $$$ off all the new people.

It BECAME, Joe? As opposed to WHEN? This has been a city that's been all about making money from the day Manhattan (note the spelling) was stolen from the Indians for some shiny beads. Admittedly, this has been both a good and a bad thing.

-JOE: I never considerd New York "Bounced Back" after the reform act and Big Mac.

So lower crime, greater prosperity, these things don't count for anything? New York was dying in the 70s - a very considerable city (800,000+) fled the city. Now this is the place everyone wants to be. Admittedly, there are good and bad aspects to this. Yes, the city is expensive, but it's always been thus for the working classes. (Do you think all those Lower East Siders from a hundred years ago lived six families to an apartment because they WANTED to or because that's all they could afford?)

-JOE: Times Square being turned into Disneyland with $300 theater tickets...an improvement eather.

This is something we can agree on. I long for the porn shops and strip clubs. But that stuff can still be found if you look hard enough. As for $300 theatre tickets, those are only for douchebags who also pay $150 for a hamburger. If you really want to go to Broadway - and, let's face it, the Great White Way is mostly for tourists and not real New Yorkers - there are ways around paying QUITE that much. Anyway, if you really want bang for your theatrical entertainment buck, I'd suggest the opera. Family Circle tickets at the Met are QUITE reasonable, especially mid-week. Try Salome. Hooo boy!

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