I am Thomas Wright, President & CEO of the Regional Plan Association. I am pleased to testify today in support of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s (PANYNJ) proposal to build an AirTrain connector between LaGuardia Airport (LGA) and Willets Point, and to offer RPA’s recommendations to ensure that the project meets its goals.
As far back as 1947, when RPA hosted the conference “Airports of Tomorrow,” we have advocated and provided recommendations for upgrading the region’s airport infrastructure. In 2011, our report Upgrading to World Class provided concrete ideas on how to expand gate and terminal capacity, which would be addressed by rebuilding terminals at LGA, Newark Airport (EWR), and John F. Kennedy Airport (JFK); increasing runway capacity at EWR and JFK and redesigning the region’s airspace; and building transit access to all three airports.
RPA initially laid out the conditions for a successful LGA ground access project in our Upgrading to World Class Revisitedreport in 2018. RPA echoed these recommendations in previous testimony submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) during the environmental review scoping process on June 4, 2019.
In the nine years since we released our initial report, the number of passengers flying through LGA increased from 24 million annual passengers to 31 million by 2019. While air travel has declined dramatically since COVID hit, the region should continue to plan and build for the future when air travel comes back and the trends from recent years are resumed.
During the environmental review scoping process, RPA supported the PANYNJ’s preferred alternative and listed a number of criteria which needed to be met for the project to successfully accomplish its goals. Perhaps most important was the need to foster interagency coordination between the PANYNJ and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to find an equitable way to pay for operations and to ensure frequent service of at least four trains an hour on the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) Port Washington branch. This remains a key issue, especially with the MTA facing huge deficits due to COVID-19. The MTA recently announced that it may need to cut service by 50% on the LIRR and other systems as a result of the financial impacts of COVID. The entire region needs the MTA to be able to continue to provide reliable and frequent transit service, and the ultimate success of the LGA AirTrain will depend on the quality and frequency of the MTA’s service on the LIRR Port Washington line.
We have also highlighted the importance of fare controls; ticket price; station design and pedestrian connections; designing a system that could later be extended to Jamaica, Queens; improvements and amenities in Flushing Bay park; and resilience. These issues will all play an important role in the eventual success of the system. We have had an ongoing dialogue with Port Authority officials to follow up on the progress of these items and appreciate their work to address these issues.
Obviously, since the scoping sessions last year, the COVID-19 global pandemic has caused great harm and loss of life to our communities. It has also created enormous fiscal challenges for the Port Authority and all levels of government. Some have maintained that in this new environment, the Port Authority should pull back from this project, or invest the funds in other regional priorities. The problem with this argument is that the LGA AirTrain takes advantage of dedicated revenue sources – specifically the Passenger Facility Charge levied on tickets paid by LGA travelers – that can only be used on projects that benefit the travelers paying the fee. So the LGA AirTrain is not in competition with other regional investments, but instead should be evaluated on whether it will address an important need at LGA, and whether it is the best way to address that need. As we have previously stated, providing a rail transit link to LGA is critical for the success of the region, and this proposal is the best way to accomplish that.
We urge the FAA to advance the project, and look forward to working with the Port Authority and other stakeholders to address these issues and make the project a success for the region.
