Originally Posted by
sethweinstein
You don't have to pay to access the AirTrain platform from the long-term-parking area. You pay only when crossing between the AirTrain area and the "rest of the world" (which includes the subway).
Which means if you somehow needed to access the long-term-parking area from the street at that point, or vice versa, you'd need to pay for the AirTrain even though you wouldn't be using it.
Seth
So I think what this means is that you pay when you enter the AirTrain station from the subway station side, but there are also additional doors to the AirTrain station long-term parking area side. You pay to get from the AirTrain platform to the subway station side or vice versa, but not to get from the AirTrain platform to the parking lot.
This initially didn't make sense to me - what's to stop someone from leaving the subway station, somehow crossing over into the long-term parking lot, and entering the AirTrain station for free? But after staring at the Google satellite image some more, I think the answer is that because the parking lot is surrounded by train tracks and highways, this would be nearly impossible.
(BTW, I thought $5 was bad, but $7.75 is ridiculous.)