Originally Posted by marlborobell
From my point of view what really killed ORH as a viable airport was the Fort Point Tunnel. That cut literally half an hour off average travel times from Metrowest to Logan, and so made Logan much more appealing as an airport to fly out of.
Various people keep saying 'it's the lack of a fast road from the Pike to ORH that's the problem' -- but these days I'm not sure that would save ORH either. MHT manages on that score, although of course they have reasonably advanced plans to build a new fast road and it's only two miles from I-293.
A couple years ago, I started this
thread about ORH mostly to compare it to MHT, PVD, BDL, and BOS. Your comments are right on, taking the Ted williams tunnel, I can make it in 56 minutes from Worcester to Logan vs. 1.5 hours and the pain that used to come from sitting in the Callahan/Sumner tunnel and merging onto the Southeast expressway. PVD, BDL, and MHT are all just a little more than an hour -and mostly there is no traffic. ORH access does require driving city streets, few well marked, and if you have driven on Airport Blvd lately, it is like driving a minefield. You might be able to go 30 mph. Personally, I don't think the problem is the access road, there were 5 or 6 airlines in the late 80's and over 300,000 enplanements and the numbers dropped steadily throughout the 90's when BDL, MHT, PVD really took off.
Moreover, the limited number of flights per day meant havoc if your flight was cancelled/delayed as often happened in winter/early spring. Prices were ok at ORH for some flights but not all and Worcesterites are notoriously frugal (ok, cheap) when it comes to paying.
MHT has gained from the population growth in Southern NH and it still manages to have cheap parking like BDL. Worcester's population is pretty stagnant. MHT highway access is through neighborhoods but it is pretty direct and the recent entryway construction helped. I find PVD to be very expensive to park these days, almost like BOS levels and I think PVD's enplanements are flat.