Thursday, April 08, 2010
Mayor retreats from airport runway, train to be moved away from terminal
by Larry Geller
From today’s breaking news, if I understand it correctly, the airport runways will not be moved.It’s too expensive. Instead, the Lagoon Drive station at the airport will retreat over to the right of this map:
If that’s the closest station (it’s too late to call the Mayor’s office as I write this to check), I wonder what arrangements will be made to get passengers quickly from the terminal to the station. Maybe they should take a cab.
I wrote about a trip to Bethesda, Md. back in April, 2007. It was such a pleasure to take my bag off the turnstile, wheel it up the escalator, then over a short people-mover to the Reagan International Airport train station.
After hauling it off the turntable I didn’t have to lift the heavy bag again until I arrived at my hotel room at the Bethesda Marriott.
The turntable is immediately to the left in this photo, you can see the waiting luggage carts. So it was only about 25-40 feet or so from the turntable where luckily my luggage popped out, to the escalator.
Some cities underground their train so it is within the airport building. Not us, I suppose. Costs too much. Or, we could have a grade-level system that goes right next to the luggage pickup area. Nope, Mufi won’t allow that.
So let’s see what his plan will be.
Oops, I said “plan.” Sorry, I’ve been arguing that the city hasn’t planned this project and that we, citizens of Honolulu, should have been involved in the process.
If the airport station is going to be far from the airport, maybe we better speak up before that “plan” gets set in concrete.
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