[k1052]

Originally Posted by Crawford

No, this isn't true. There's a rail line, of course, but it's at capacity into Manhattan. And Jamaica isn't JFK. There's a second LIRR tunnel into Midtown but it won't have service for a few more years (East Side Access).

JFK Airtrain was built to heavy rail/LIRR standards, so you could hypothetically run LIRR directly from JFK, but if such a service were started, it would go through Brooklyn, because that route has capacity, and they wanted to tie it into WTC reconstruction.

But additional tunneling would have to be dug, and the lower level of the WTC station would have to be finished. Bloomberg supported this extension, but it was controversial, never fully funded, and killed under DeBlasio. It may someday be resurrected but would cost billions and still won't serve most visitors, and I can think of about a dozen higher priority projects.

The AirTrain guideway was built to dimensional and electrical compatibility with LIRR but not to take the weight of existing LIRR rolling stock. The idea IIRC was that at some point in the future some sort of light weight stock could be built that could use regular LIRR trackage and AirTrain. Regulations, until recently, have made that an impossibility.