Cutting Travel Time to LaGuardia in Half, Littorally
The City Council is weighing a measure that (if enacted) will call upon the administration of Mayor Eric Adams to launch a ferry route from Lower Manhattan to LaGuardia Airport. Community Board 1 (CB1) has passed a resolution urging the City Council to adopt the proposal.
The City Council bill (which will be discussed at a hearing tomorrow) notes that LaGuardia is among the busiest hubs in the United States, and is the only major New York airport not served by a subway connection. It argues that existing NYC Ferry service on the East River already passes close to LaGuardia on the way to stops in the Bronx.
In response to the City Council measure, CB1 noted in a recent resolution that the Board “has advocated for a one-seat ride to an airport for well over a decade. Better airport access would benefit residents, workers, and the 2.7 million [annual tourist visitors to Lower Manhattan] by providing a low-cost, efficient, sustainable, and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accessible transportation from our district.”
Both initiatives spring from a study released in 2022 by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (which operates all of the major airports in the metropolitan area), after Governor Kathy Hochul killed plans formulated by her predecessor, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, to build a new AirTrain to LaGuardia. That proposal would have connected the airport to both the Long Island Rail Road and the subway’s 7 train — in both cases by moving passengers eastward for those transfers, when the vast majority of users would likely be headed to destinations west of the LaGuardia (such as Manhattan). This plan was slated to cost several billion dollars.
Governor Hochul ordered Port Authority planners to consider a broad range of lower-cost alternatives. One of these is to extend existing East River ferry routes to either of a pair of proposed docks alongside the airport — one in Bowery Bay (near LaGuardia’s Terminal A) and another in Flushing Bay (east of the airport).
Both options would require a shuttle bus to connect the ferry wharf with the airport’s various terminals. Such jitneys already operate between terminals within LaGuardia, so adding an extra stop would entail relatively minor expense.
For Lower Manhattan residents, the most likely point of embarkation would be Pier 11, at the foot of Wall Street. The current ferry route between Pier 11 and Soundview/Clason Point (in the Bronx) takes 49 minutes. Travel time to LaGuardia by ferry would be similar.
This travel time compares favorably with options currently available to Lower Manhattan residents and workers, such as car (which can take more than an hour during peak travel times) and subway (which requires at least one change between trains, plus a bus connection). Because of this congested and convoluted network, downtowners are advised to allow at least two hours to get to LaGuardia Airport.