chucko

The last bit of the light rail line from downtown Seattle to the airport finally opened yesterday. 35 mins (plus/minus 5 mins), $2.50. Getting to the airport station involves a walk across the parking garage, about the same as the walk from the HEX to any of the LHR terminals. Baggage carts available for a $4 rental (there are some things, it seems, that the Port of Seattle will never learn).

cmtskier

If this were a Europe airport, the station would be inside the building, near baggage claim, free luggage trolleys, and there would be luggage space on the train cars - there is none!

dfotn

It took 20 years to get the short bit of light rail built at all. Originally they weren't even going to run it to the airport. All the details you mention above make sense, politics in this region do not. Everything ends up going to a public vote two or three times. It's insane.

Fruitcake

But don't the public of Seattle want their airport to be accessible other than through a car park? It's a whole different way of looking at the world. Cheap fare though, to be fair. Hope to go there in 2010. Have a nice day!

BingBongBoy

$4 to rent a baggage cart??? Are you kidding!

That is scandalous... !

ThaiDan

Yes, but sadly this is America. We tend to be an auto-driven (no pun intended) society and most Americans (certainly those in political power in major cities) rarely think about convenience for anyone besides themselves behind the wheel of their own auto...certainly not for visitors or those of us who do not want or have cars!

Be thankful that there is now relatively convenient transport available to the Seattle airport and that luggage carts are conveniently located at the train terminal. ^

tkelvin69

It's part of the Obama health care plan to get fat Americans off their arse and start walking. 40 years ago no state had an ave of 20% excess BMI and now only one state has less than 20%.

Gardyloo

Oh baloney. The light rail was designed to be a commuter train, not an airport express. That's why its alignment takes a roundabout route - through Tukwila, Skyline, and the low-income Rainier Valley for example, to facilitate car-free commutes, including a large number of reverse commutes, i.e. airport-area workers who live in the Rainier Valley.

Aligning the tracks and station to be closer to the terminal would have meant humongous expense in demo and reconstruction of the airport garage, the access roads (including airfreight access) and horrendous disruption of the terminal area.

The walk from the bag claim is roughly 350 yds/325 m. Not sure but I'd bet it's a shorter walk than many to tube/train stations at LHR.

The $4 bag carts are an abomination, agreed.

chucko

Concur. The route to the airport was a benefit of, not the original impulse for, the light rail project. And tunneling (for a station closer to the terminal) is not the same here as other places. Most of the soils are glacial till---visualize tunneling through a big mound of soggy talcum powder.

MIKESILV

Amazing .. somebody posts information he presumeably thought might possibly be useful to some here and in less than half dozen posts its become a diatribe about everything thats wrong with the US

mike

OPebble

everything?

NC Flyer

Many Europeans do find it difficult to understand why so few major US airports have almost no means of access that doesn't involve driving. There are some notable exceptions (SFO, ORD, BOS) and there are some that get it almost right (JFK, EWR with their surcharge for the final Airtrain sector that is 2-3 times the subway/train fare). And of course there are some European airports with poor connections.

For some reason subway/light rail is seen as public transport and therefore downmarket yet flying somehow escapes the "public transport" label. The irony of calling the economy cabin "coach" seems to have escaped most people.