Transit advocates on Monday will propose rebranding a Queens bus route as the Free LaGuardia Subway Shuttle.
The existing Q70 charges a standard $2.75 fare. Thousands of additional flyers would use it if it were free, according to the advocacy groups Riders Alliance and Global Gateway Alliance.
34 comments:
Great idea!
The least we can do for those who are leaving on a jet plane.
We are losing population and they want to make it even cheaper, especially for those who can afford a plane ticket and pay taxes...
Actually, NYC population is going up (the state is going down) but let's not let facts stand in the way of a good opinion
So will the MTA make the M60 free too?
Leaving on a jet plane?
Don't know when they might be back again?
Leaving?
Free transportation for the "undocumented" who work at the airport support services?
So the Q70 bus, I believe, goes from Jackson Heights subway station (E, F, #7 trains) to LGA. I think that almost all travelers take a taxi from airport, not bus + subway.
"thousands more would use it if it were free." Really?!! What a concept! Hey, thousands more would eat at Peter Lugers is it were free! Thousands more would use fly to Hawaii if it were free! Thousands more would drive Ferrari's if they were free!
What the heck is wrong with people? A $2.75 ride to the airport is an excellent deal. Why should this bus be free but the AirTrain to JFK from Jamaica stay at $5? And the Q70 is technically "free" for most people anyway who are using a free transfer from the subway. What's the difference if you pay $2.75 for the subway and then transfer free to the Q70, versus paying $2.75 for the subway and just not swiping your Metrocard on the Q70? And in the reverse, you are "paying" for the Q70, but then transfer free to the subway later on.
What about the Q72 that also goes to the airport? And the one that goes from Flushing Main Street? What about the Kew Gardens to JFK limited service bus?
I'm sure thousands more people would take the subway if the entire system were free. Doesn't make it a good idea.
...The free subway to bus transfer already exists.
lets just make all MTA transportation free! who's with me?
"Thousands would use it if it were free?" I don't know about that. Maybe the airport workers for whom that bus is convenient would, but as a traveler I don't want to lug my suitcase onto a bus. If these "free riders" were transferring from the subway, it's a free transfer from the subway they already paid for anyway, so who exactly is this free to?
The people asking "isn't is already free with a subway transfer?" have the right idea. The proposal here is essentially a rebranding effort, not some grand scheme to give away bus rides. Most of the rides on this line are already free subway to bus transfers, The idea is to make it, in big letters and on maps and stuff, the FREE AIRPORT SHUTTLE BUS.there's little revenue lost here and I'm willing to believe it's possible even revenue to gain. If it's done right I could definitely see it getting more people to ride the subway.
One caveat is that one of the two groups sponsoring it is, perhaps not surprisingly, an airport lobbying group. make of that what you will but not everything is some devious plot to give free stuff to illegal aliens
If I was still around all the fare boxes on the 1980s GMC buses I have will be broken and you couldn't collect fares anyhow
Anyone with the expendable income to travel to New York by plane is not going to change their travel behavior for a free bus ride. What, the cab they'd otherwise take would be such a worse deal by comparison if they could save a measly $2.75?
Why just this bus? It's not the only one that goes by the airport.
A little background is necessary here:
The Global Gateway Alliance (GGA) is run by Joe Sitt and Jared Kushner, two billionaire Real Estate developers. Their "alliance" includes the NYCEDC's Kathryn Wylde and many other real estate and tourism players.
They are not a straphangers campaign. Any random sample of GGA propaganda shows an indifference to Queens residents. Here are the highlights:
1. The first ever act of GGA was a letter to the FAA urging them to forego environmental studies on LaGuardia expansion. The FAA responded saying that no new flight routes would studied for impact on the human environment,
2. GGA's primary focus is "NextGen", a satellitre driven air transportation system which increases airport capacity and efficiency, while also dramatically increasing noise and air pollution.
3. GGA campaigns for the following: an end to aGuardia's permiter rule, which will bring 4 engine jets and the A380 unto LaGuatdia's tiny runways; four additional runways at each airport; a recategorizing of wake turbelence separations between aircraft; optimum profile descent and a subway expansion.
They offer not a penny to pay for any of this. They are concerned with airport expansion, looking good while lobbying for it and lining their own pockets.
And the NY Daily News, it should be pointed out, is a great little lapdog for them...
If they paid ME $2.75 to take a bus to LGA, I wouldn't want to put up with the aggravation of waiting at a bus stop in the rain with vibrant and diverse NYers, lugging my stuff on a crowded bus, standing all the way, and taking too long. I predict no noticeable increase in ridership.
To all of us residents having to put up with intolerable noise from planes flying low over homes, we can thank these so-called "transit advocacy" groups. They are the ones pushing the FAA to ignore calls for environmental impact studies.
The fare might be free, but the noise pollution is the price everybody pays in this area for this brainless solution - airport in the middle of the most heavily populated
area of NYC.
It's really only "free" if your destination is Woodside or Jackson Heights. Everyone else is going to take another bus, subway, LIRR, or taxi and that won't be "free".
Overall, I think it's a good idea to get more riders on the Q70.
> To all of us residents having to put up with intolerable noise from planes flying low over homes
LaGuardia Airport has been operating since 1939, and you're just now asking for an EIS?
I live in Woodside close enough to hear flight operations on days when they're using runway 04L for landing. It's a tradeoff of living in a very big and dense city - I live here partly because it is close to airport and LIRR, another noise source that people complain about even though Sunnyside Yards has been there for over 100 years!
If you don't like it, there are plenty of developers that would be happy to buy you out!
Anon #22:
It's only in the past 3 years, with the institution by FAA of the so-called NextGen flight operations, that the planes have been flying low over residential areas in Queens from LGA. Before that, they would go over water, and fly higher.
The flight routes changed in 2012. Drastically. And Flushing never had a permanent departure route over it. Likely you know this and choose to ignore it, as you seem have some basic knowledge of the runways and operations (still trying to figure out what the "L" is on runway 04, but close enough).
In 2012, new NextGen departure routes replaced old routes that had utilized Flushing Meadows for noise mitigation. The old route reached an altitude of 1500 feet before passing over a single residence. The new route, TNNIS, strafes nearly 250,000 people before reaching that same altitude. Flushing prospered under the old configuration.
Asking for and EIS now? No, we asked for it about week after the new route was made permanent in 2012. If John McCain, of all people, can recognize that NextGen has uprooted communities in his home city of Phoenix, and introduce legislation asking for a supplemental EIS, I assume the same could be done here in the epicenter of bleeding heartism.
Add to the list of changes a separations reduction between consecutive planes from 5 miles down to two miles, four engine jets being added to the fleet mix, an increase in slots, and yet more NextGen routes on the way, and it adds up to the most aggressive expansion of this airport since it rose up out the mud in 1939 as purely regional airport. (1939 also being about a generation after my family had settled in the area).
Sometimes I get the impression I'm talking to the same anonymous person over and over and over...
Sincerely,
Brian Will
queensquietskies.org
It's really embarrassing when advocates put forward plans like this without looking at all the angles. Creating a free service and then running it significantly more frequently? Funneling passengers to already overcrowded subway lines?
I give up.
@Brian Will:
Is there anywhere we can read about NextGen, TNNIS, and these new flight routes you're talking about?
The point of making it free was to speed up the bus and as part of creating a more branded non regular transit user friendly service. When a bus fills up at just two stops before heading to the airport everyone going through one door and paying slows down the bus. Maybe there would be some minimal revenue loss. More than it would cost to run off board SBS fare payment machines at those two stops?
Running more buses and making them free costs money, but the alternative transit to LGA improvement is a billion dollar+ airtrain. A better bus to Jackson Heights makes more sense than the train to FMCP.
"thousands more would use it if it were free." Really?!! What a concept! Hey, thousands more would eat at Peter Lugers is it were free! Thousands more would use fly to Hawaii if it were free! Thousands more would drive Ferrari's if they were free!
This comment was absolutely brilliant and sums up what the problem with the progressive policy is. Making something 'free'. There is no such thing.
My hat off to you!
This sounds like marketing to inform people about free transfers rather than outright free.
Fair point about capacity in western Queens too - too many people, even more coming, but no new roads or subway lines. Already a challenge to get to/from Manhattan at rush hour, where "rush hour" now seems to go from 7 AM to 7 PM, sometimes later. And good luck getting to your "free" shuttle when the Mets are playing!
The "L" designation on a runway denotes a "left" traffic pattern as in left turns on approach, which from the look of it means that airplanes approaching from that side would be coming over Astoria/Woodside and Elmhurst and turning left to land. Presumably the old pattern was "right", which would have airplanes coming over Flushing Bay and Citi Field (which I remember seeing out the window last time I flew in there and had a window seat) Who knows - when they finish those "supertalls" in LIC, maybe they'll be forced around to the other side again!
If a major concern in the MTA budget is the horror of people boarding a bus on 61st Street in Woodside or 74th Street in Jackson Heights and going to LGA and NOT paying any other MTA fares on that trip, then a lot of other more urgent concerns are solved.
This isn't an offer to eat at Peter Lugers, it's an offer to let you eat a stale pushcart pretzel after you have a ordered a boiled water hotdog. The demand for this "free" thing is self-limiting.
The most effective solution is an N train to LaGuardia. The Global Gateway Alliance's wealthy supporters can fund it.
Free bus rides: "This comment was absolutely brilliant and sums up what the problem with the progressive policy is."
--
The comment was prepared by a billionaire developer, was repeated (verbatim) by a newspaper owned by a billionaire developer, and echoed (verbatim) by elected officials whose campaigns were funded by billionaire developers.
Straight from the Ayn Rand playbook, if you ask me.
As much as progressives are an eternal boogeyman in some peoples eyes, it's a real stretch to channel this into the hippie/communist column. The architects of this free bus initiative would gladly consume the entire borough with aviation related interests in order to keep their luxury condos full.
@Brian Will
While I can appreciate your efforts to curb air traffic over Queens, the ongoing battle perplexes me. I don't speak from an unsympathetic point of view, because I am a Flushing resident, and I do live in the flight path - the planes over my house are low enough that I can tell you which airline it is, and sometimes even the tail number. I also live 1/4 block from the LIRR, so none of this is lost on me. What perplexes me are several points: Your family has lived here since before the airport was built, and has obviously been bothered by the noise. Why did one of those generations in the last 80 years not have the idea to move away from it? Did no one ever think that as technology grows that the types of aircraft used would evolve? Bigger planes, more frequent travel, more noise. I certainly don't think that today's planes are going to be the planes of 40 years in the future, nor do I expect planes of the future to be smaller or quieter in any way, or for there to be less air traffic.
No one expected the planes to get smaller or make less noise. But on the other hand no one expected the flight paths to be consolidated so that they fly every 30 seconds very low over the same houses, increasing the noise for those living under them exponentially.
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