He's right. One can understand the political reasons why LaGuardia should be brought into the same class as JFK and Newark Liberty by also having an AirTrain facility. But in haste to put something -- anything -- there, they are pointing it in the wrong direction for most who would be expected to use it. While JFK's AirTrain hooks into Jamaica, a hub for LIRR, the proposed AirTrain LaGuardia would go east to meet the LIRR Willets Point station near Citi Field and the tennis facilities at Forest Hills as well as the 7 train. The LIRR is only the Port Washington Branch, the only line that does not serve Jamaica, Brooklyn, Long Island City, or any other terminus save for Penn Station in Manhattan. So for most of Long Island, somebody going to the airport would have to zigzag their way there by taking any westbound train that stops at Woodside, change to a Port Washington train going eastbound, and then at Willets Point turn west again on AirTrain. I still maintain that with an elevated subway the dead-ends nearby, namely what is now the N W line in Astoria, it would be easier to build an extension directly into the airport -- the fact it would be heavy rail rather than monorail or an advanced light rail notwithstanding.
