For years we used the slogan “best mayor, worst airport,” referring to LaGuardia. But thanks to Andrew Cuomo’s time as governor, the once awful Third World landing field in Queens now matches Fiorello the man in superlatives. Except for fast, reliable ground transportation.
Cuomo’s one error in fixing LGA was banking on a very stupid, very expensive, $2.4 billion people mover called the AirTrain that would have required travelers from Manhattan and other points west to double back after taking the LIRR or No. 7. In an outstanding move of standing up to the big construction conglomerates and the labor unions, Gov. Hochul killed the AirTrain.
The best option has always been — and still remains — extending the N train to the airport, but until then and for the last decade, we have supported enhancing the Q70 bus that has a 10-minute nonstop hop from the big Jackson Heights–Roosevelt Ave./74th St. station, served by five subway lines. The concept to make the bus free was that of the Riders Alliance during Thanksgiving in 2015 and we jumped onboard. As just about everyone would also be taking the subway, there would be little if any fare loss.
Starting during Christmas 2016, the MTA and Port Authority would make the Q70 free during certain busy holiday times, although we sometimes would have to remind them to drop the fare.
Finally, on April 27, 2022, Hochul, as the first governor to ever attend an MTA Board meeting said: “Every once in a while, I peruse the newspapers. Saw a rather enlightened editorial, Daily News. And they suggested that we make the fares on the Q70 free. I thought that made a lot of sense that the Q70 bus could be this interim means to let people know that this is a good way to get from the airport to the next station, 10 minutes away. So when there’s ideas that are out there that make sense to us, we’re not going to debate it and study it and think about it for a long time, I’m a person of action.”
While we support or oppose politicians all the time, rarely it is us being endorsed by a politician.
That was three years ago. Two years ago, when Hochul did away with the AirTrain, an outside expert panel said that the N-train was ideal, but was too difficult to achieve and backed making the free Q70 even better with a dedicated bus lane on the northbound BQE among other improvements.
But it took 24 months for the bus lane plan to be formally announced, as it was by Hochul and the Port last week. The other upgrades in the $160 million package adopted by the PA are synchronizing the green lights for the buses, building a new bus stop at LGA, enhancing markings on the buses and improving signs at the subway station.
Missing is anything about many more signs at the airport itself directing where to find the bus. The PA needs to inform arriving flyers with much bigger and better displays in the terminals. We asked PA boss Rick Cotton about this last week, but he offered only a weak response. There have to be better signs and the signs must be HUGE, shouting: “FREE 10-MINUTE BUS RIDE TO SUBWAY.”
The goal is to get as many people as possible on the buses, so tell them.
