Talk:Airport rail link

Should San Francisco be under commuter rail? Or even one-seat ride? To get from CalTrain, you have to take BART, not exactly an airport train. In addition, once you get to the airport (including if you come from elsewhere on BART) you may want to transfer to AirTrain. Simply extending AirTrain and upgrading CalTrain would have been better than SFO BART, IMO.

I moved it. BART is definitely more of a regional/commuter service and its fare structure is based on distance. Regarding train-to-airport though, if it gets you between the city center and at least one (1) part of the airport (in this case, the International Terminal) directly, then it qualifies as a direct rail link. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.235.218.88 (talk) 07:40, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you to User:Jfruh for answering my question. --Jason McHuff 20:21, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm wondering how to treat SFO in this list. It's perfectly possible to walk from the BART station to wherever you want to go in the terminal -- BART is immediately adjacent to the International terminal, and the terminals are all physically connected. But you can transfer directly from BART to SFO's people mover, and because of the airport's size, many do so. --Jfruh 14:45, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I took another stab at it. --agr 16:07, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Hmm...Taking a look at People mover, SFO is not the only airport that has both an external train connection and an internal train. O'hare (where you have to take a long walk to get to the internal train to get to the int'l term) and Atlanta are two. Also, where do we draw the line for Rail to bus to airport? Dulles is a long way from the DC metro, though it does have dedicated bus service, and for LGA, you have to take a standard city bus. --Jason McHuff 18:40, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Milwaukee in two categories

Milwaukee's airport is under two categories in this list: "One-seat ride via main-line train," and "Rail to bus to airport". Clearly they both can't be right. To fall into the first category, the train station ought to be in or immediately adjacent to the terminal, and a passenger ought to customarily get from one to the other on foot. Please, can someone who's actually been to Milwaukee's airport clarify the situation there? --Jfruh 19:10, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Pruning "Rail to bus to airport"

This category is getting filled up with some services that don't really belong there, IMO. It seems to me that for something to actually qualify as train-to-the-plane service but still involve a bus, that bus service ought to be a short-run service entirely dedicated to bringing passengers between the terminal and the train station. I'm thinking here of things like the MBTA's free shuttle to Logan from Airport station on the Blue Line, or the AirBART bus that travels between Coliseum/Oakland Airport station on BART and the Oakland Airport terminal. To follow up on what Jason McHuff said above: in just about any big city with a rail transit infrastructure, it's going to be possible to take a bus from a rail station to the airport, which threatens to clutter this list with services that don't really qualify as plane-to-the-train -- both things like th Dulles Airporter (which is a miles-long trip run by a private company, not Dulles or the WMATA) or the M60 in New York (which is just an ordinary city bus line that happens to connect a train station to LGA).

My proposal would be that for a train-to-bus-to-airport service to qualify for this page it would need to:

• Be dedicated to transporting passengers from the airport to a rail station
• Be operated (at least in terms of public branding) by either the airport or the connecting rail agency

What say you all? --Jfruh 19:18, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

It would make a good necessary condition, but I'm not sure it should be sufficient. It is not too uncommon to have dedicated bus services operated by the airport that go all the way to the central train station of major city served by the airport -- not because the users are supposed to have arrived by rail, but (partly) because the central station is a hub for city buses or other forms of further local transportation. Henning Makholm 21:49, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, good point -- this isn't particularly common in North America, but I know of several instances in Europe. How about as additional criteria:

• The train station connected by bus must be physically close to the airport.

or even:

• The train station connected by bus must be strongly associated, by branding or by name, with the airport. --Jfruh 22:01, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. — Larry V (talk) 19:23, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Then I remove Helsinki, that has a public bus line between the airport and a rail station not named after the airport, and it takes clearly longer total time than bus from the inner city. [1] BIL 17:35, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Move proposal

I'm not happy with the title Train-to-the-plane. It sounds more like a marketing term than an encyclopedic article title, and googling suggests that its use is New York specific at least to some degree. Would anyone object to retitling it to Airport rail link instead? Henning Makholm 10:19, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

No objection here. --Jfruh (talk) 14:16, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Just stumbled in here. I think that Train to the plane needs to be redirected to the JFK Express which is the NYC Specific article that Henning Makholm is talking about. If not, at least a see other section. Rob110178 22:30, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Friedrichshafen airport

Friedrihshafen airport FDH, a minor airport in Germany also has a rail link with regional trains. airport website or pdf outlining the train connections. FDH is a minor airport, but shouldn't it be included?. Ah, I'll just add it. --84.145.227.90 17:59, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Distinguishing between "main-line rail" and "local public transport"

The "One-seat ride via main-line train" section starts out by describing its content as "Commuter rail-type services".

I don't think there is much commuter rail about the kind of trains that call at Frankfurt (Main) Flughafen Fernbahnhof ... in fact, for an airport served by an actual commuter rail service, I would tend to classify it as "local public transport".

How can we explain the distinction between these sections better? Is it possible to distinguish them at all? Perhaps it rather ought to be a three-way split between

1. "intercity rail" (continuing beyond the urban area nominally served by the airport)
2. "dedicated airport express" (without intermediate stops, usually separate fare structure)
3. "local public transport" (local to metro area, not dedicated to airport traffic)

Many airports have two of these, but not always the same two. Perhaps coalesce the two existing sections, and tag each item with which kinds of service exists? –Henning Makholm (talk) 01:09, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I would tend to agree with you. In fact, why bother dividing them into categories at all? The current setup creates a somewhat confusing situation where the same airport might be listed in multiple spots on the page. I would say that the whole list should be alphabetical by city, or perhaps broken up by continent and then alphabetical within each continet. The entry for each airport should list all rail connections at that airport. --Jfruh (talk) 19:02, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

orlando international airport has people movers

But its only from terminal to the main building and visa versa, dunno if it should be included.