4.29.24 - An unthinkable turnaround has happened at New York City’s airports
' There was a time not too long ago that New York’s airports were considered a drag on economic growth of the most populous corner of the country.
All three of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s hubs were consistently ranked among the nation’s worst, thanks to airport layouts that were challenging to navigate and congested runways that led to interminable delays and frequent cancellations. Terminals located on the outskirts of the city were difficult to get to via public transit and costly when hailing a cab or Uber thanks to perpetually clogged parkways surrounding each airport. Once inside, security lines were lengthy and waiting areas were cramped and unpleasant. When it rained, brown water leaked into LaGuardia’s terminals so often that it became a meme.
Sometimes it seemed as if LaGuardia Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport were in an ignominious race to the bottom.
“Going back to the last decade or two, Port Authority airports in particular finished in the absolute low end of every passenger survey of travelers in North America,” Rick Cotton, the Port Authority’s executive director, said in a recent interview. “LaGuardia was in terrible shape.”
The dilapidated state of the airports hampered business growth in New York, experts said, while hindering the national economy as well.
“Airports are so vital to the region’s economy, and the cost of not renovating them is their deterioration into unusable disrepair,” said Rachel Weinberger, chair of transportation at the Regional Plan Association, a nonprofit research organization. “At some point you can’t serve that any more if you’re so deteriorated and you don’t have good ground access connections.”
Indeed, a reliable system of air travel is a critical component of a thriving global city. In New York, key sectors such as finance, the life sciences, higher education, media and, of course, tourism rely on well-functioning airports, even in today’s post-pandemic age of Zoom meetings and hybrid work.
“This crucial link between air travel and economic prosperity is threatened by a lack of adequate capacity in the region’s aviation system, including air space, airports and landside connections,” the RPA argued in a 2011 report on the dire need to improve the New York City region’s three major airports. “This is manifested in flight delays that greatly exceed those of every other major airport in the United States. These delays cost the region hundreds of millions of dollars each year in lost wages and business income. In the future, without additional capacity the impacts will be far more severe.”
At LaGuardia, the shoddy terminals were one of the few sources of frustration that Joe Biden and Donald Trump shared. (Both compared the airport to a “Third World country.”) But Biden’s remarks in 2014 may have sparked a turnaround. Later that year, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo invited Biden to a press conference where the two politicians vowed to revamp New York’s airports.
A decade and billions of dollars later, the transformation has been almost unthinkable. The gleaming new terminals have won accolades and shot up the rankings, passengers are reporting greater levels of satisfaction in independent surveys and, following a dip during the coronavirus pandemic, the three airports collectively hit a new record for total passengers last year.
“It’s actually an extraordinary moment in Port Authority history,” Cotton said. “We are driving more than $30 billion in new investment in our new major airports. That’s never happened before.”
In a once-in-a-generation investment to turn its dilapidated terminals into modernized gateways to New York City, the Port Authority is putting $19 billion toward overhauling its largest international airport, JFK, while ferrying construction materials and debris from the airport’s 5,000-acre campus through Jamaica Bay to limit highway congestion. The Port Authority demolished Terminal 3, partnered with Delta to expand Terminal 4, joined American Airlines to renovate Terminal 8, and razed Terminal 2. More recently, JFK’s Terminal 6 was redeveloped at a cost of $4.2 billion in order to connect it with Terminal 5, and contractors broke ground to start construction on a new 2.5-million-square-foot Terminal 1, with $9.5 billion in private financing. A rebuilding of the airport’s roadway network with new garages and electrical substations is also happening. JFK’s full transformation should be complete by the end of the decade. '