miadukes

Arriving to LGA on a friday night at 10pm and leaving on a 745pm flight on sunday. What would be the best method, private car pickup, uber, taxi??? looking to try to avoid the traffic jam as most as possible.

Out of my Element

For those times I wouldn't worry too much about traffic. Car Service or taxi/uber would take about the same amount of time

ijgordon

FWIW, @LGAairport tweeted at 7:45pm this past Friday (10/18) about near a record-breaking volume of passengers, and apologized for delays for those trying to get to/from the airport. One comment noted a 42 minute rideshare pickup time at terminal C/D.

I wonder if the construction progress is resulting in periodic reconfigurations of traffic patterns that causes these problems.

justforfun

The problems started from the early morning on Friday. Traffic to get into the airport was backed up onto the Grand Central. After sitting in my Uber at 5am for a good 20 minutes with minimal movement and no signs of improvement, got out and walked to the terminal.

ijgordon

Yikes, I never would have expected a meaningful delay at 5am, I don't think anyone here would have either.

dstan

Mrs. dstan is slated to fly out of LGA on a Friday 11am flight, leaving Manhattan around 9am. Any thoughts on level of traffic to expect? (I usually take afternoon flights, so am not sure).

uppereastsider

A couple of factors... where in Manhattan? 9am is usually the tail end of rush hour, but there may be issues with cross town traffic still.

Which friday? If its before a long weekend, that's considered a LGA Peak travel day and could have more issues.

I'm normally flying into LGA on a Friday, but it usually seems busier than other days of the week. I might advise a bit more travel time

ijgordon

I would probably leave an extra 30-45 minutes earlier than normal, just to be safe. It seems like such a crapshoot. Just when we thought things were getting better -- BOOM, a standstill at 5 in the morning and hike down the highway.

And they really have a chicken-and-egg problem with the buses. If they could get a lot of people on the buses, the traffic situation would improve. But who's going to voluntarily take a bus (especially *to* terminal C/D, or *from* terminal B) that could end up sitting in an extra 30+ minutes of traffic while circling around to a terminal you don't need to visit?

IMO, they need a dedicated bus lane (but not sure if they can "afford" to take a full lane out of service for cars) and more frequent service (now it's every 7-10 minutes outside of late-night, they probably need 5-7 min) to convince people to choose the bus over a taxi/rideshare.

Hoyaheel

Is traffic still bad enough to merit picking JFK over LGA for a New York visit? Hotel likely midtown east. I know last time we chose JFK intentionally. Tonight I'm trying to butter my husband up so he'll agree to a quick Nov weekend trip (likely the weekend before Thanksgiving, Nov 22-25 or so). Airfare is pretty much the same for JFK or LGA for us, and equally good time options, so it's really just a question of convenience & cost (but, cost for rideshare or car, we have decided we don't feel like taking our luggage on the train and subway). Thanks for advice!

krazykanuck

This is a big issue. Since the M60 and Q70 go B to D to C, and the usual logjam in my experience is exiting B due to 4 lanes consolidating into on 1 on the ramp down from the departures area.

The ride share companies aren't great either. Two times ago when I landed at LGA I called for a Lyft to the Delta terminal, phone buzzed saying the car was there, I went to the assigned stand post and the car was nowhere in sight. Then the driver cancelled the ride. I said screw it and took the M60 home. Since I live on the east side, taking the M60 to the 4/5 at 125th isn't that bad.

progapanda

Things have improved at Terminals C and D, but be prepared to voluntarily take the shuttle to Terminal A if you are running into issues with rideshare pickup. As others mentioned, rideshare drivers, despite their best intentions, often get stuck in a logjam entering the Terminals area and will sometimes give up by cancelling the ride to exit the airport. Curbside pickups for both rideshare and taxicabs are always available at Terminal A, which is less than 10 minutes away by shuttle bus. The shuttle bus to Terminal A exits the airport immediately after Terminal C (not sure if that's a shuttle-only exit) and thus usually does not get stuck in the cluster around Terminal B.

Terminal A is also closer to Midtown anyway so any time spent in the shuttle bus may still make for a quicker overall ride to your destination via Terminal A. Of course, if the pickup times at the Terminal are reasonable then by all means avoid the shuttle bus altogether.

ijgordon

I think if you're intent on taking a car or rideshare, there's probably not much of a preference. The LGA traffic issues should be roughly equivalent to the longer distance to JFK (and its own typical traffic issues). I do suppose it depends exactly what your travel days are, but 11/22-25 is before Thanksgiving, so you won't be hitting the peak travel days.

The "benefit" to JFK these days is that the train/subway/Airtrain is pretty reliable (~40 minutes from Penn Station or Midtown East near the E train) time-wise, so you don't really have to factor in traffic or time of day, and that's likely faster than a car/taxi to either airport, especially if there is bad LGA traffic.

hoffmich45

If you are intent on taking any type of car instead of public transportation, then it makes no difference. It's a choice of being stuck in traffic on the Van Wyck from JFK or getting out of the construction mess at LGA. I do second the idea of the Air Train Subway option if at all possible.

Hoyaheel

Of course it's "possible"; we just don't want to do it, as I noted ;-)

Bought my tickets yesterday - LGA. Noticed that Delta website includes a blurb about using a shuttle to change terminals to get the right sort of transport to leave the airport, which I appreciate.....

andrewstahl

I fly in and out of LGA for business. I always Uber to and from the airport. I allot one hour from getting off the plane to getting to a midtown hotel unless it is morning rush hour. I allot two hours from leaving my Bryant Park office to get to the gate for my flight out.

On the rare occasion that I use JFK or Newark, I use the same time estimates for LGA. If going to Newark, I always take the train.

The Uber drive to and from city is dictated by traffic. Weekday traffic is very different than weekend traffic.

I probably have flown in and out of NY more than 100 times over the last three years.