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Walk to/from the Airport to save money

Old Dec 10, 2015, 6:53 pm
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Last edit by: frb98mf
Note: in many cases there are shorter walks available to either nearby public transport that may be cheaper than the more expensive trains to the airport, or to nearby attractions. If you edit this wiki, please post those as well.

Airport - Notes (include time and a link to a google map route)
AGP - approx. 40 minutes from Holiday Inn Express, which is the nearest airport hotel
ANC - downtown 1h 20'
BOM - from domestic terminal to Ville Parle railway station (crowded on week-days, OK on week-ends) (20 mn)
BRE - center (45 min)
BRU - from Zaventem train station
CNX (Chiang Mai, Thailand) - 48 minutes from the far side of old town, less to near side
CPH - city center(1h30 min)
DAD (Da Nang, Vietnam) - one hour to the beach, 40 minutes to the center
DAL - downtown(2h) or take bus 524 for free to Inwood Station and then walk. Costs $2.50 TO DAL.
DCA - 15 minutes. Crystal City, Arlington.
EDI - short walk to the nearby Hilton. Airport bus also stops across the street from Hilton and goes to centre of town
ETH - AIRPORT CLOSED
FUK - 45 minutes to Hakata Station
GIB - at the north end of Gibraltar. Walkable to La Linea or to Gibraltar
GVA - center (1hr), CERN (1h4),
IEV - City center(1h30 min)
ITM - to Hotarugaike station (Hankyu network) avoiding Monorail (18 mn)
JFK - Lefferts Blvd airtrain station to subway (to avoid airtrain fee) (20 min)
LCA - about 1h to center seafront
LCY - to Canary Wharf (1 hr)
LIS - Oriente (40 mins), city center (1h20m)
LIN - center (1h30m)
LYR - center (1hr) - watch out for the polar bears! (gun required, or make sure you are traveling with someone you can outrun)
MAA - to Tirusulam station across the elevated highway (10 mn)
MAD - T123Barajas metro station (to save on airport surcharge) (30 min)
MEX - T2 to Pantitlan Metro (10 min)
NCE - Arrivals level to the city center's Gare-de-Ville station (75 min)
PEK - Buy a metro card at the metro station but don't take the extremely expensive CNY 25 train there. Walk outside and take 850快 via expressway to the city, CNY 2 only after discount.
PRG - center This map is somewhat deceptive - if you try to walk along the road, there is no room (3h)
SAN - downtown along the coast (40 mins), sidewalks
SDU - downtown Rio (30 min)
SDV - AIRPORT CLOSED
SJC - downtown (1hr)
SJJ - to the nearest trolley bus line (15 min), to the center (2 hrs)
SYD - int'l terminal to Wolli Creek Station (to avoid the airport surcharge) (20 min)
domestic terminal to Mascot station (to avoid the airport surcharge) (20 min)
TLS - to the center (1h40m)
TOS - center (1hr)
TSA - to center (40 mn to 1 hr)
WAW - center (1h40m)
WIC - to the centre (15 min)
WLG - center (1h30m)
YTZ - tunnel to the island is now open.

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Walk to/from the Airport to save money

Old Mar 6, 2015, 11:18 am
  #271  
 
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Originally Posted by UltraRant
I also considered walking from ADD to my hotel, as it was just 3 kilometer or so. There is a strip of reasonable hotels close to the airport.

However, as there is also a motorway in between and transport was offered for free anyway (and the temperature was on the high side), I chose the shuttle.
If you get in too late for your hotel shuttle, you'll discover that the post-10pm flat rate for a taxi to go the measly 3km is 500 birr ($25), which is outrageous for Ethiopia. So keep your walking options open! (You can easily walk under the motorway in question.)

I mean, I can afford the $25, but it's a matter of principle!
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Old Mar 6, 2015, 7:37 pm
  #272  
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Originally Posted by AlreadyThere
post-10pm flat rate for a taxi to go the measly 3km is 500 birr ($25), which is outrageous for Ethiopia. So keep your walking options open!
Is it safe to walk alone at night
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Old Mar 7, 2015, 12:11 pm
  #273  
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Originally Posted by chrissxb
Nice airport in France is very close to downtown France.
Isn't Paris the downtown of France?

It is walkable from some airport hotels to airports. Small towns can have close by airports, like Gibraltar.

I have walked a few times from a city to the airport, but only rarely.

you could do it from Gibraltar, Easter Island, Melilla, London City (in some cases), Little Rock (a few neighborhoods), Midway (some Chicago neighborhoods), Seattle (some apartments close by), etc.
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Old Mar 7, 2015, 8:11 pm
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I'm curious about what airports you cannot walk from or to. With Heathrow, at least in one direction, I'm pretty sure you cannot walk through the tunnel that brings you there, based on my experience taking local buses from Heathrow.
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Old Mar 10, 2015, 3:58 am
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Technically it's possible to walk to and from any airport. The main question would be how much risk or effort you want to put into it. For example, you can walk to Heathrow terminals 1-3, but it'd be a suicide mission. Besides, it's just 1 or so with an Oyster card on the Piccadilly line from Hatton Cross. Terminal 4 would be much more walkable (yet still madness). You have then walked to the airport and can just get on the tube from there to reach other terminals.

Other airports I'd absolutely won't walk to are FDE (it's a 20 km or so uphill walk), OSL (a 50 km walk to downtown), JNB (have to go through a township to get downtown, which basically also is a ghetto), ARN (also a very, very long walk), AAR (30 km to town) and MFM (sure, it's walkable, but there are loads of free luxury hotel shuttles ).
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Old Mar 10, 2015, 4:10 am
  #276  
 
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Originally Posted by AlreadyThere
If you get in too late for your hotel shuttle, you'll discover that the post-10pm flat rate for a taxi to go the measly 3km is 500 birr ($25), which is outrageous for Ethiopia. So keep your walking options open! (You can easily walk under the motorway in question.)

I mean, I can afford the $25, but it's a matter of principle!
It is actually very easy to talk this down to $20. Still outrageous, but it's a matter of principle.

For safety at night: I won't risk walking alone at night in Addis. There's too much that can go wrong. There seems to be too little control of what's going on at night and also regular power blackouts happen frequently (including street lights).

I haven't felt unsafe in Addis during daytime, although it can be very tiresome to walk around and suddenly having a lot of new 'friends' who demand to take you for a traditional coffee session or traditional dance show (with a huge and unexpected bill at the end), or even 'just want to talk to you to improve their English' and the contents of their wallet, obviously.
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Old Mar 12, 2015, 10:43 pm
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Originally Posted by UltraRant
It is actually very easy to talk this down to $20. Still outrageous, but it's a matter of principle.

For safety at night: I won't risk walking alone at night in Addis. There's too much that can go wrong. There seems to be too little control of what's going on at night and also regular power blackouts happen frequently (including street lights).
I did try to talk 'em down, but everyone held firm. But the area between the airport and the southern tier of hotels isn't much of a high-crime area since there's nothing of value there. Of course, high traffic plus bad driving... that's the pedestrian hazard.

But if you're Norwegian, how can you be outraged by anything? The 1 km bus ride to my OSL airport hotel cost like 80 kr ($10). When my jaw visibly dropped, the driver smiled and said, "Welcome to Norway."

(In Oslo, in the old days, if you were ambitious you could walk Fornebu. But Gardermoen... I don't think so.)

Last edited by AlreadyThere; Mar 12, 2015 at 11:17 pm
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Old Mar 13, 2015, 2:01 am
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I wouldn't walk in MAD, but anyone taking their airport 3 surcharge scam instead of walking the 600m to the next metro station is crazy or didn't do proper research
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Old Mar 13, 2015, 4:33 am
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Boston now has a free shuttle to downtown!
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Old Mar 13, 2015, 5:07 am
  #280  
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LAD (Luanda) is more or less in town, and I walked to it from my hotel the first time I stayed. Second time I would have but it was 10pm, I'd had three hours sleep the night before, and I just face it.

Anyway, you always see some interesting local colour near the airport:


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Old Mar 13, 2015, 12:11 pm
  #281  
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Originally Posted by YuropFlyer
I wouldn't walk in MAD, but anyone taking their airport 3 surcharge scam instead of walking the 600m to the next metro station is crazy or didn't do proper research
I walked to/from Atocha at least three times.

Very easy if you look at Google Maps @:-)

IIRC, commuter train also stops at MAD, and with two day pass for Madrid transit didn't cost anything extra - maybe it does if you just buy a ticket.

Bought the pass in anticipation of using hotel points way out in suburbs south, but pensiones around Plaza del So were so cheap I cancelled my reservation ane got a room around there. And commuter to airport.
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Old Mar 13, 2015, 3:25 pm
  #282  
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Originally Posted by BangkokTraveler
Cool thread.

MPH (Caticlan, Philippines) is a 10 minute walk to the ferry to Boracay.

MNL Terminal 3, for early arrivals, I've walked thru the parking lot across the road to McDonalds for breakfast, then grabbed a taxi to the city for half the cost of the airport taxis.

I think someone mentioned this ... CRK (Clark, Philippines), you can take a 10 peso jeepney from the 7-11 near SM Mall to the Fedex office, then walk 10 minutes to the airport terminal. This saves 500 pesos.

CGX (Meigs), you can walk to the loop in about 15 minutes. Oh wait, never mind, King Richard (Daley) bulldozed it in the dead of night in 2003, for the common good, of course.
Where do you find a place to cross the road from T3 to the Resorts World side? With the construction of the overpass, the road is totally blocked down the middle from one end of T3 to the other. Is there a "secret" way thru the construction site?

I ask since I am so tired of waiting at T3 while traffic is at a total stop and being able to SEE the Marriott but not get there for 1-2 hours. Taking a taxi, even going to the departures level, is not an option as they are in the same traffic. There is no secret lane for traffic getting out of the terminal roadway, making a U-turn and entering the Resorts World complex.

If they would only build a walking bridge across the street, it would make arrival so much quicker.

Thanks for any suggestions.
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Old Mar 14, 2015, 11:25 pm
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Originally Posted by WillTravel
I'm curious about what airports you cannot walk from or to.
I'll take a stab at this question... Baghdad? Tripoli? Damascus? Donetsk?

Last edited by AlreadyThere; Mar 14, 2015 at 11:33 pm
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Old Mar 17, 2015, 8:37 am
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I've never done it myself as I have a pad on Oahu and always ride to the airport and back, but walking from HNL to a very awesome, yet frequently overlooked Tiki Bar Restaurant called "La Mariana Sailing Club" (Marina, Bar, Restaurant, and Gift Shop) would IMO be well worth the hoof. It's probably a 10 minute ride with traffic, and I'd say a 30-40 minute walk depending on your pace. If you could swim across the water from the airport, you'd be there in 10 minutes.

The hardest part would be walking on Nimitz, but there are sidewalks most of the way.

Eventually, Honolulu may put in the much anticipated airport to downtown train. Until then, it's "The Bus", taxi or walking.

http://www.lamarianasailingclub.com/

I don't anticipate anyone laying over in HNL unless it's inter-island. If you are flying to say, Maui, and have a 5 hour layover in HNL, rather than sit at the airport, I'd definitely check out La Mariana.
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Old Mar 31, 2015, 11:25 am
  #285  
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Friedrichshafen (FDH) is well doable, about 4-5km from the lakeside promenade, and access to the tiny airport is easy. I have never actually done it, because the buses are covered by my transport pass, but I have heard of people doing it.
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