"22% of Logan Airport passengers used MBTA, Logan Express or private bus – a new record"
I would have expected that to be much higher percentage. Personally, I can't even recall the last time I actually drove into Logan. Typically it's bus service.
A lot of talk about ground transportation improvements but no mention of the shelved blue line people mover
A lot of talk about ground transportation improvements but no mention of the shelved blue line people mover
I shall remain hopeful for one day!
I have mixed feelings about the parking expansion, but I feel like I have equally mixed feelings about terminal-adjacent "Airport Hotels" when we're talking space-constrained airports close in to metro areas, in terms of being the best long-term planning either.
Boston is desperately short on hotel rooms, I have to imagine at least some demand from flight crews is spilling out into Seaport and downtown. Parking space can be distributed across the state as part of a Logan Express expansion, hotel space cannot.
I mean since plane noise isn't really a problem inside the terminals, it's clearly a solvable problem, presumably with lots of sound deadening in the walls. (Obviously you wouldn't want to camp on the roof but I don't think that's a super popular place to sleep generally.)
Okay but let's compare not just hotels on the airport itself, but hotels within ~1.5-2 miles (or on the Airtrain in the case of JFK). The only difference between an on-property hotel and an off-property one is that Massport or whatever airport authority doesn't get a cut from the off-property ones. Frankly I think it paints the opposite picture and shows a clear need for more hotels, despite the... lackluster methodology.
| Airport | # of Nearby Hotels |
| BOS | ~10, depends on how you count Seaport |
| LGA | 9 |
| JFK | ~15, depending on how you count it |
| EWR | ~20 |
| PHL | ~20 |
| DCA | 14 |
| BWI | ~15 |
| IAD | ~26 |
| SFO | ~20 |
So I have a friend who's a captain at one of the legacy carriers - it's less overflow, more contractually required. Their union contracts tend to specify that for an overnight exceeding a certain length (I seem to recall 14 hours), they were to be booked in a hotel in the CBD of the major city that airport serves. The 4-14 hour range could be booked in airport proximate hotels, but at a place like JFK, that means if they have a short turn they might be in Queens, for an actual overnight they're in Manhattan. In my friends case, their BOS hotel is the Copley Marriott. Same thing applies to most of the international carries flying into Boston, where their crews might be on 48hr layovers for rest.
Interesting, that's useful information about flight crews. Ultimately though, I don't think it really changes the conclusion. Boston is short on hotel space, and Logan has fewer hotels than most of its peers. Hotels need to be built near where people want to go, while parking (provided a shuttle is provided) does not. Therefore, it would be better to use the space at Logan for a hotel, and build the parking further out and connect it to Logan with new or existing Logan Express routes.
I thought construction was supposed to start in 2026. If that is still correct, 4 years to build a garage?
4 years to build a nearly million-square-foot garage... at an active airport that handles ~44,000,000 passengers annually... and likely requires utility relocation... and requires construction staging and mitigation for throughput of passengers... and anything else I'm missing. Four years is at least a realistic timeframe.
Close the airport, and you can have it in 6 months.
I think you're being quite fair. I'll be curious about the construction sequencing for building this structure while maintaining access from Central Parking garage. I would think there would be a disruption at some point, but maybe that is why we are seeing multiple skybridges to connect the garage to the terminal in order to provide connection during the sequence. I think access to the utility plant should be relatively straight forward, but who knows where those underground lines are in reality and could be quite a headache.