<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by WHBM:
Originally posted by HobokenFlyer:
As with Europe's superior rail connections. The Europeans have a couple of advantages. World War II. This detroyed most infrastructure so that when it was "rebuilt" you didn't have to worry about right of way right etc. Everything was blown to S*** (especially in Germany). So it was very easy to redesign your rail and airport network. </font>
This is not the Europe that those of use who live here recognise.
Not one of the airport connections in the UK has in any way benefited from land destroyed in WW2. In fact the majority of what was destroyed was reconstructed like-for-like within about 10 years anyway, and that was before airport rail connections really started (the first was London Gatwick in 1958, but that was an open-field project tied in to an existing rail route).
Same for most of the other European airports I know of. Does everyone in the US think Europe was flattened after the war?
Airports like Amsterdam didn't get their rail link till the early 1980's, they built it in 4 years. Heathrow got it's express several years ago, CDG connects to the mainline tracks outside the airport etc...
None of these projects have anything to do with WWII yet they were built fast and efficiently. The problem at JFK is that they waited MUCH too long, did very poor planning when they expanded the airport etc...