With airports often located away from a city’s centre due to space constraints, people need a way to efficiently get between their gates & their final destinations. This is where the Airport Express comes in.
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Ever wondered why your city’s transit just doesn’t seem quite up to snuff? RMTransit is here to answer that, and help you open your eyes to all of the different public transportation systems around the world!
Reece (the RM in RMTransit) is an urbanist and public transport critic residing in Toronto, Canada, with the goal of helping the world become more connected through metros, trams, buses, high-speed trains, and all other transport modes.
35 Comments
All those commenting on Copenhagen are going to love next weeks video 🎉
Delhi airport express costs like 0.50$ that's how public transit should be
BHX. Trains to Birmingham city centre (Birmingham New Street) in 10 to 18 minutes. Some direct services, some local stopping services, some continue on to other stations. Birmingham New Street is the UK's best connected rail station with services to most major cities, including Manchester, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, London, etc. From the airport (Birmingham International station) there are trains direct to London (about 1 hour away) plus other cities.
Dubai Metro has Terminal 1 and T3 of Dubai Airport as just regular stops on the Red Line; you do not need to board a separate special train to go to the airport. and as of 2018 (when i was there last), exiting at the T1 or T3 stops did not require a special fare either, that was different from a normal ride on the Metro. i'm not able to say if this system is better than having a special train/line for the airport; i suppose it would definitely be cheaper for the lower-level airport workers who may not be able to afford $25/day or whatever, to commute to their job
Every major airport should have a significant train station both for links to the centre of their cities, and for links to any city within 2 or 3 hours by HSR.
I think you should mention the best one of all time… Ottawa's O-Train being built now! Where the wizard planners decided that not only would there be no express from downtown, but you would need to connect …. TWICE!…. to get to the airport. That's right, THREE trains to get from downtown Ottawa to YOW. UBER!!!! The best part is listening to planners deny that housing developers south of the airport had more sway over the path of the airport train than the actual airport. No waIt.. the best part is that the connection is outdoors, in winter, with your roller bags and salt covered platforms, in the -30degree wind…Now that is city and transit planning!
Also with the Toronto UP Express: several times friends of mine from Ottawa had reasons to be in hotels around Pearson (weddings or particular events), so we booked them VIA Rail trains to Union and transferred them to the UP Express, then got them on (free!) airport hotel shuttles to their hotels. It was the best decision ever.
PKM or SKM in Gdańsk's airport. There are direct trains to both Gdańsk and Gdynia (biggest cities in northern Poland) but also to smaller cities and small villages in the region.
SYD airport has an airport link which is very close to the city but is really annoying because it costs $16.40 and comes every 7.5 mins, which connects to the rest of Sydney easily, which runs to the suburbs and goes out to Leppington and Macarthur, also connecting at Central for all other services. Then again, SYD airport closes at 11, and the last train is at 11:57 pm and the first trains gets in two hours before the airport opens, it takes just 12 mins to get to the city. Was also built as an extension of a previous line as part of the Clearways project. So no massive building costs
One reason the Zurich solution works so well is that it's served by normal trains (long distance and commuter). They already have luggage storage as default. There's no metro.
brisbane, sydney, now perth and soon to be melbourne have great train connection lines
I was going to write:"You forgot talking about Schiphol" and…you talked about Schiphol haha
Great content as always!
Airports can also become a good reason to develop an entire local rail network: just the idea of moving all the airport employees from and to around the city is a great incentive to improve the entire system.
Update on Heathrow – Elizabeth Line now running from Abbey Wood to Heathrow (from November 6th 2022)
I always prefer airports with normal train journeys. Both of Benelux airports, CDG, Germany, BCN VS special services like Lyon, Rome, Stockholm, Oslo. All of these special services are insanely expensive, and limited to one city vs connectivity to a wider Network.
What do you think about Singapore?here all 4 terminals have either a Train line or bus services that brings them to the city
I think it‘s very well done in Switzerland with airports in Zurich and Geneva having access to the city itself and other cities threw the hole country. The lines were basically extended to the airport and beyond. Those airports even have multiple modes well integrated.
Thankfully, this sort of integrated public transit design has been seen everywhere in China, if you take a plane to Shanghai Hongqiao airport, after your arrival, you can immdediately buy a ticket on your phone and hop on one of the high-speed trains in the adjacent Hongqiao railway station which will take you to any major city in China. Undergournd, the shanghai metro is connected to every corner of the city, not to mention the bus and coach terminal all in the same location. of course, taxi and hauling services are also present. It just makes travel so much easier.
In Beijing, there is also an airport express connecting the new Daxin International airport to the city center, the fare price is much more affordable than HKG's express, less than 6 dollars(35RMB)
In Ottawa, the Airport Authority did not want the Rail Transit to go the airport because it would cut into parking revenues. . . Definition of short sighted thinking
In Lisbon, the airport is inside the city, and it is actually directly conected to the metro. It's one of it's greatest advantages, you can be in the city center in 15 minutes.
But this is going to end in the future, as this airport is probably going to be removed, again, it is inside the city, and its space is extremelly valuable. So, the new airport, whose plan will be 50 years old in 2024 without even having defined a place for construction, will probably be done on the south bank of the river, where space is cheaper and wider, without the mountains of the Lisbon-north peninsula. The problem is that the sites under study will not have any rail connection, with the only way to reach the city being by car over the Vasco da Gama bridge or by boat. The only crossing of the Tagus by rail is the 25 de Abril bridge, which is already overloaded with rail traffic and there is no money to pay for a new bridge, since the two that already exist were too big a financial effort for the country alone.
This will probably increase a lot the car traffic over the bridge and into Lisbon when the airport is built, preciselly when the city is making efforts (or claming to make efforts) to reduce traffic and polution.
It's not exclusively an Airport Express but direct airport access is a great feature of MARTA in Atlanta. And it's way more consistent than trying to navigate through Atlanta traffic.
The new trains arriving in 2023-2025 will have a lot more of the mentioned features. But I think they have a lot to improve on especially in the stations. It's easy to walk out of ATL and never realize that there is a train station past baggage claim that will take you downtown for $2.50
Just did tons of traveling recently, and i noticed finally dc is adding a metro connection! It has been so annoying to use taxi, uber, or buses from the airport.
How about Zurich Airport. It is perfectly connected to the overall swiss train system (the 2nd best in the world), a direct connection to downtowm every 5-10 minutes (which also takes you less than 10 minutes). Some of the trains are the local S Bahn, some of them the the "longhaul" trains going from Zurich Airport througout the country to Geneva, Basel and other cities or other subburbs. It doesn't matter which train you take, you always pay the local train ticket (much less than 10 CHF/$/€). The only problem is that the S Bahn doesn't have special luggage storage (the "longhaul" trains do).
Cleveland's rapid transit line connects to their airport.
@RMTransit Bangkok, Tokyo also have airport express.
Tokyo Narita Express should be mentioned as the least objectionable way to get to that airport.
Gatwick airport has a good train line connection
If you think the 18 minutes of Stockholm's connection is short enough to afford other stops, you'll be outraged by the 6 minute connection of Geneva Airport to the central station in the middle of the city!
Glass doors on platforms are stupid and should not exist
The point of an express is not to stop at every single stop we’re a local train stops at every stop
It is a nightmare if no train to Airport mate…
Surprised you didnt bring up the Leonardo express in Rome!
But completely agree on pretty much all the points. Here in NYC i feel like EWR has the best rail connection out of all our airports and ironically its not even in NYC. JFK is sooooo far from the city center that its almost ridiculous to expect someone to take the subway, and the alternative is Airtrain people mover to transfer to regional rail at Jaimaica. No rail in LaGuradia because of nimbys soooo….cant say much there.
Many germans commenting "well, Frankfurt?", but that's not all to it. There isn't any mayor airport in Germany, which is not integrated in their regional transit system, either via Stadtbahn or S-Bahn, some also on regional express trains (like Cologne and Berlin) or even on HSR (like Frankfurt, Düsseldorf or Berlin and Stuttgart in near future). The only german airports without transit access are airports whose right of existence can be questioned alltogether (like Weeze, Dortmund or Frankfurt/Hahn)
Oh for an express, or even regular, LRT line to Edmonton International. A regional rail system is my dream though. Done right, I think a 120 km/h Edmonton – Edmonton International – Leduc – Millet – Wetaskiwin – Camrose – Beaumont – Edmonton loop would be popular. Similar loops could be done to the west (Devon, Calmar, Spruce Grove, Stony Plain) and northeast (reaching as far as Redwater).
In Indonesia this trend is catching on thankfully. It started with Medan cuz their new airport was built outside of city limits so a train was necessary. Then Palembang built an LRT system from the airport to the Asian Games venue in 2018. Jakarta followed it up with its own train link from the airport to the city center. Now you have midsize cities like Yogyakarta and small cities like Padang with direct transit from airport to the city. And there's more to come for sure!
And then theres the JFK Airtrain in NY, where you are forced to buy a MTA card to get out of the Airtrain station, and it doesn’t even bring you that close to the city