| There
is now a rail connection to Newark airport. They spent a billion dollars
on this and it is pretty lame. You take a train to a station near the airport
and then get on a monorail to the terminals. It takes about 25 minutes
on the train and then 10-15 minutes on the monorail, depending on the terminal
you go to. They are getting the kinks out of the system; when it works
it is good, but when the system doesn't work it can be awful. There are
3 terminals at Newark. Allow 50 minutes to an hour to get to the airport
terminal once the train leaves the station in New York. However, it takes
longer to get back to the city from the airport. Trains can leave at very
inconvenient intervals (ie: a half hour apart) and while the New Jersey
transit trains cost $11.50 each way, an Amtrak train costs $27 one way.
For this you could either take the $12 bus which gets you there in under
half an hour and which leaves every 20 minutes or take a taxi already ($55
door to door). Another problem from the airport: Trains going to the airport
are originating at Penn Station in New York City so they leave pretty much
when the monitors say so. Trains passing through Newark airport are often
late coming from far away, and the monitors post scheduled times without
noting when the trains are actually supposed to pass by. These can differ
by 20-30 minutes, so you can buy a ticket for an 8:45 train and then go
down to the rail at 8:40 to see an 8:20 train come by. The smartest thing
to do if you are not sure what is going on is to buy tickets for both train
systems and get a refund on the ticket you don’t use (or just save it around
for next trip). Or just buy the ticket on the train and pay the extra few
dollars service fee to the conductor. Trains in America are atrocious;
we have things timed perfectly so that just as you step out of a train
into a station, your connecting train is just pulling out of the station.
Under construction is the rail connection to JFK airport and this is expected
to be quite lousy; it requires a transfer at Jamaica station. Zurich it
ain’t here. |