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New York will invest nearly four billion dollars to rebuild almost entirely its LaGuardia airport. Objective: to make this platform a major hub to connect Big Apple to the rest of the United States and the world.
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The new LaGuardia airport will make it possible to accommodate a greater number of passengers under better conditions.
Crédits: Image: Office of the Governor of New York-
LaGuardia Airport is located on the banks of the Hudson River and is the closest hub to Manhattan.
Crédits: Image: New York Governor Office-
The project plans to bring together the current buildings and terminals scattered around the site in a single gigantic building that would also serve as a multimodal platform with access to the metro and train.
Crédits: Image: New York Governor Office-
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More than 117 million passengers passed through New York airports in 2014. And this taking into account only the three main airports (JFK, Newark and LaGuardia), without counting the traffic of business aerodromes, heliports or airports. airports located further away (Teterboro or Wetchester). Either one of the cities in the world with the highest air traffic. However, the latter continues to grow year after year. But in an extremely urbanized agglomeration, it is difficult to imagine building new platforms.
It is therefore to the expansion of the smallest of the three large airports in New York that the local authorities have decided to proceed. But in view of the project, it would be more appropriate to speak of reconstruction: the current infrastructures will continue to operate while the titanic site of the new airport will take place nearby. In total, nearly four billion dollars will be invested by the city of New York, the state of the same name and thePort Authority New York & New Jersey, which manages LaGuardia and Big Apple’s two other major platforms.
Nearest Manhattan Airport
“New York has had a proactive approach to large infrastructures in the past and we want to renew this attitude,” warned Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York State earlier this week, presenting the project. “We are transforming LaGuardia into a world-class airport aligned with the city and state of New York,” he added.
An ambition commensurate with the challenge facing those responsible for the project. Built around the same time as Newark and more than a decade before JFK, LaGuardia is arguably the airport that has been redeveloped and renovated the least often of the three. However, it is also the one that is closest to Manhattan and the heart of the megalopolis. Although it receives almost no international flights (apart from a few connections with Canada and the Caribbean), it serves as a major hub for domestic routes, notably with a central role in the network of large companies such as American Airlines and US Airways.
Late flight record
However, the infrastructure has long been outdated. The length of the runways does not allow the latest generations of wide-body aircraft to be accommodated. As for other flights, the congestion of slots and the inadequacy of the terminals make LaGuardia record airport for delays and disruptions in the United States, with just over 70% of flights on time according to official statistics.
Of course, the site and its many hazards will not resolve the many problems immediately and perhaps even cause more serious ones during the work. But the long-term ambition is to have a modern and efficient tool for serving New York.
To do this, the project is ambitious: the multitude of small technical buildings, boarding halls, hangars and administrative infrastructures will be united in a single very large building slightly further south than the current infrastructure, a direct connection with the rail ( train station and metro station) and with the waters (stopover for the ferry) will be integrated directly into the terminal, the tracks will be redone in order to be able to accommodate newer and larger aircraft, the hotel park of the airport will be expanded with new establishments, …
8000 workplaces during the construction site
A titanic project which should make it possible to create 8,000 workplaces during the work on the airport itself and more than 3,500 on the hotel site. But the ambition is commensurate with the means implemented: the first sections of the new airport should open their doors to visitors in 2019 and the end of the site is announced for 2021. In other words, less than six years of work to build a new airport .
Ultimately, this new airport is intended to become an example of what can be achieved in terms of airport infrastructure in the 21st century. And if it currently only hosts domestic flights and a few international flights, the authorities in charge of its operation (and that of the JFK and Newark platforms) would consider opening it to international lines with transatlantic flights. From there to imagine flights from Cointrin to LaGuardia …
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