Originally Posted by HeathrowGuy
LGA is by far the WORST of the three airports for Manahattan accessibility, IMHO. With no rail link, and few viable routing alternatives if the Grand Central Parkway is a mess, I avoid that airport as much as possible in favor of EWR or JFK, in that order (I live lower Manhattan for the time being).
HeathrowGuy,
Everyone has their preferences, of course, and their reason for these preferences.
Personally, I prefer JFK, with LGA my choice for shorter flights if I'm not flying at rush hour. EWR comes in a distant third.
My office is two blocks north of Penn Station, so AirTrain access is not an issue. As I wrote in my previous post, I think the JFK AirTrain is the better product.
LGA from Midtown is not a bad cab ride, except, of course, at rush hour. Also, regarding public transportation, LGA is clearly not served by an AirTrain, but there are a couple of OK bus/subway connections which have the advantage of only costing the price of one MTA $2 fare, whether the Q-33 or Q-47 bus to the 7 train, or the M-60 bus to either the N/W in Astoria, or to Harlem where you can connect to either the 4/5 on the Eastside, or the 2/3 or the A/C/B/D on the Westside.
EWR is geographically close, but taking an NYC cab to NJ is expensive and, on the return, the NJ cabs are absurdly over-priced, especially for any location that isn't immediately at the exit of either the Lincoln or Holland Tunnels.
Regarding JFK, the airport used to be the proverbial airport nightmare, but the improvements have created a metamorphosis. And the indisputable advantage of JFK is the fact that is by far and away the most reliable NYC airport in times of inclement weather.