High Speed Rail (Boston to... Texas?)

im sure that by the time this things built in a few years theyll have plenty of time to figure out an easy way people can get to and from the train
 
Looking at HSR in California....

It'll stop in DOWNTOWN san francisco (amtrak currently does not) and connect with Muni, BART and possibly caltrain.

It will stop in DOWNTOWN LA at Union station and connect with metrolink, the red/purple subway, and the gold line light rail (and a few years later, expo and blue will make it there too).

Meanwhile, LAX connects to the rgeen line via lengthy shuttle bus, and SFO connects to BART, I believe also via shuttle bus.
 
If Silver Line were light rail...would it be the Gold Line.
 
Ron Newman said:
San Francisco airport is directly on BART, no shuttle bus.
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There's an elevated AirTrain loop from the SFO terminals to BART.

Better than a bus. BOS should have one.


* * *

At the terminus (Transbay Terminal) of your HSR trip from Los Angeles, you might need a shuttle bus to the nearest BART station --just a few blocks away, but an eternity when struggling with luggage on city streets.
 
The original Logan 2000 plan included a people-mover. I don't know why it was dropped.
 
^ They opted for cheaper moving walkways instead.

My dad was stationed at Logan with the MSP for 12 years. There was talk about a people-mover as far back as the early 60s. Historically, the issue was weather conditions and their effect on the equipment. So...buses.
 
But Logan doesn't have moving walkways between the terminals, at least not connecting to the T station.
 
Logan's probably the shittiest large airport in America. It may have something to do with Massport being a hive of patronage jobs.

The better solution for an intermodal connection would have been to push the Red Line across the harbor in a third tube of the Ted Williams Tunnel. The present Blue Line station could have then become more focused on the community (as opposed to the traveling public).
 
ablarc said:
At the terminus (Transbay Terminal) of your HSR trip from Los Angeles, you might need a shuttle bus to the nearest BART station --just a few blocks away, but an eternity when struggling with luggage on city streets.
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No, the transbay terminal is supposed to be home to BART via a 2nd underwater tube.
 
Beton Brut said:
Logan's probably the shittiest large airport in America.
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I guess you haven't been to LaGuardia or Miami International! Logan's so easy now..fly in, hop on the Silver Line Bus (I know, about everyone on here hates it, but it sure does the job), get on the commuter rail and I'm in Bridgewater! Piece of cake! Prior to the Big Dig, was a nightmare of traffic and hours of time, though I always loved the view of the city from the central artery.
 
Yeah, in the bit of flying I've done, there aren't many airports that are better than Logan. Certainly, plenty of room for improvement, but it's an incredibly nice airport. I know the aesthetics hardly matter to most travelers, but the new Delta terminal is awesome - the escalator going underneath the tarmac has all the grandeur of a Gothic cathedral (IMHO). I guess the things that would make the biggest difference are connections between terminals, and more importantly, a connection directly to the T. Those buses are a pain in the ass.
 
atlantaden said:
I guess you haven't been to LaGuardia or Miami International!
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LaGuardia's tiny by comparison. And I've never traveled through Miami.

kennedy said:
I guess the things that would make the biggest difference are connections between terminals, and more importantly, a connection directly to the T.
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These are pretty important features. They represent the core of Logan's deficiencies in terms of "ease-of-use."

O'Hare is worse, like a thoughtlessly counter-intuitive maze.
 
Minneapolis - St. Paul is a very functional airport if I may mention it. St. Louis Lambert sucks worse than any airport I've ever been to. I wouldn't be surprised if Manchester was better. That was a little bit random, but I thought I'd share.
 
Ron Newman said:
O'Hare is better, as a subway line serves it directly.
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That subway line is a depressing introduction to Chicago. Lurching its way, slow painful stop by painful stop, through the city's neverending impersonation of Dorchester, it makes you wonder if you're on a Moebius strip of slow transit. If you could figure out how to get off and over onto the other side, you could maybe find the plane you came in on still on the tarmac, and go back home.
 
ablarc said:
That subway line is a depressing introduction to Chicago. Lurching its way, slow painful stop by painful stop, through the city's neverending impersonation of Dorchester, it makes you wonder if you're on a Moebius strip of slow transit. If you could figure out how to get off and over onto the other side, you could maybe find the plane you came in on still on the tarmac, and go back home.
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Still sounds better than the A train ride from the Howard Beach (!) AirTrain station outside JFK.

New York's airports have pitiful transit access. Your options for JFK are a two hour long subway odyssey through Brooklyn's still-somewhat-awful eastern ghettoes, followed by the (expensive and confusing) AirTrain, or expensive commuter rail to the expensive and confusing AirTrain. Your option for LaGuardia is semi-local bus that can only be accessed from Harlem.

Compared to this, getting to Logan by Silver Line is a dream. If New York had BRT direct to either airport it would be a huge improvement.
 
Is it just me, or is Logan the emptiest airport in the world?

I've flown out of Logan dozens of times, and there's never a line, even right before a holiday. No line to check in, a tiny line to security, and then lots of room in the terminals.

Meanwhile, I was at National recently making a connection and the terminal was PACKED. I was in Las vegas last week and the security line stretched for miles...on a Thursday in January!
 
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