On the brighter side...
https://qns.com/2023/03/laguardia-be...port-terminal/
Survey says: LaGuardia’s new Terminal B named world’s best new airport terminal
By Bill Parry
March 16, 2023
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It may not be getting an AirTrain, but LaGuardia Airport’s new $4 billion Terminal B was named the world’s best new terminal based on a global passenger survey, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced Wednesday, March 15.
The survey was conducted by the airport rating firm Skytrax and is based on multiple factors including check-in, shopping, security, terminal comfort and ambiance and choice of bars and restaurants. Presentations for a range of honors, including the world’s best airport as well as best terminal, were announced at the Passenger Terminal Expo in Amsterdam on March 15.
Terminal B is also the first airline terminal in North America to achieve the highest global 5-Star Airport Terminal Rating from Skytrax, referred to as the “Oscars of the airport industry,” as a quality benchmark in assessing customer service and facilities across more than 550 airports.
“Our goal at the Port Authority was to completely transform the customer experience at LaGuardia, from curb to gate, by building a brand-new, world-class airport,” Port Authority Executive Director Rick Cotton said. “Winning this prestigious award and becoming the first North American airport terminal to receive a 5-star rating from Skytrax proves that we have accomplished what many once said was impossible: elevate LaGuardia from worst to best.”
“This 5-star airport terminal rating is a fabulous achievement for Terminal B LaGuardia Airport, being just one of 22 airports and terminals worldwide to achieve our highest 5-star rating,” Skytrax CEO Edward Plaisted said. “This terminal provides an excellent range of passenger facilities, and particular standouts include very good standards of wayfinding and signage, high standards of staff service, and some very nice design and art features.”
LaGuardia Gateway Partners, the private consortium of airline experts that developed and now manages Terminal B, is proud of the prestigious accolades.
“We’re thrilled that Terminal B was named the best new airport terminal in the world and received the first 5-star rating for an airport terminal in North America by Skytrax, the leading authority in airport experience,” LaGuardia Gateway Partners CEO Frank Scremin said. “This is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the LaGuardia Gateway Partners team as well as the entire Terminal B community – the more than 5,000 individuals who come together to provide the best experience for our terminal guests.”
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https://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...campaign=share
AMERICA BUILT AN ACTUALLY GOOD AIRPORT
LaGuardia is reborn, and it has a message for the nation.
By Ian Bogost
FEBRUARY 22, 2023
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In 2004, Steven Spielberg made an entire movie about the terror of getting stuck for months in an airport, but I might be happy never to leave the new LaGuardia.
Air travel itself, the part where you are crammed like a rodent into a metal tube, is clearly miserable. So is everything in its orbit: the barfsome cab from the city, the shameful indignity of security, the sullen panic of being away from home, and—most of all—the ghastly purgatory of the airport that detains you.
For a very long time, New York City’s LaGuardia Airport felt like the intricately dressed set of an apocalypse film. Spread across its terminals were abandoned check-in stands gone feral, floors damp with discharged moistures, low ceilings looming over dark corridors. Now, near the end of a nine-year, $8 billion rebuild of its main terminals and roadways, LaGuardia has become an unexpected hero for American infrastructural renewal. It is an incredible airport.
Terminal B, which houses most airlines, feels like a theme park—in a good way. Delta’s Terminal C, still under construction, has had its cramped and dingy concourses replaced with airy new spaces and a swank, cavernous airline club. Across the airport, sedans and taxis breeze through drop-offs and pickups unencumbered. The aircraft taxiways flow now too, making arrivals and departures more efficient. Slowly, word is getting out. People return from the Big Apple and talk about their trip to its airport instead of its restaurants or museums or theaters.
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Our country once took pride in building things, but then all the things got built. To take pride in rebuilding them will require new approaches to design. When I paid a visit to the renovated airport in East Elmhurst, Queens, I found that it has a message for America: The future of infrastructure is here, and it’s fun, and it’s expensive, and it’s built right on top of its forebears.
.....An airport isn’t generally a place where one stops moving, except to wait, sit, eat, or urinate. That’s even more the case in New York City, the world’s most impatient place. But in the center of the rebuilt LaGuardia, I watched, mesmerized, as travelers parked their roll-aboards abruptly, just so they could watch the stalks of water raining down. The shows change seasonally, giving even frequent fliers a reason to pause.
Airlines and their passengers have conflicting goals. An airline wants to get passengers to the gates and on the planes on time. Passengers want to avoid the boredom and discomfort that comes with spending time in airport seats. The only available distractions—walking, looking, shopping, eating, and entertainment—come at the cost of anxiety around departure.
Terminal B attempts to address this problem in its physical design. A central check-in and security space leads to this commercial zone, which then branches out to two concourses of gates, each accessed via a glass sky bridge that rises over the taxiways, planes passing underneath. Large, continuously updated signage shows travelers the timing of their flights. Human agents flank these signs, ready to answer questions and give advice.
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“In the U.S., we’re very much a go-to-the-gate culture,” said Scremin, who led this terminal’s redevelopment and now heads its management for LaGuardia Gateway Partners, a private-sector operator. By encouraging people to occupy the commercial district that radiates out from the fountain for as long as possible, Scremin explains, the airport discourages them from crowding together too early at the gates. It also brings in revenue for Scremin’s company, through retail leases.
Both goals are best accomplished, it turns out, by filling the airport with gratifying, even meaningful, activity. Scremin sees his role as being more like a hotelier’s than a property manager’s. Lighting dims and cools as the day turns to evening. The staff are dressed in black, hotel-style uniforms, and even the restrooms have attendants—and shelves, and entryways wide enough that you don’t bump suitcases with other passengers. The terminal is a place you want to be in rather than one you wish would just spit you out again. This is LaGuardia’s first lesson for rebuilders. Infrastructure can’t just serve a functional purpose, not anymore. It has to offer an experience.
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Some might sneer at that experience—Ugh, the airport has been Disney-fied. But let’s be honest: So has everything else. Times Square is a cartoon circus, and SoHo is a shopping mall. Little is packed in the Meatpacking District, and Washington Square Arch is an Instagram backdrop as much as a monument. Consumerism is crass, but it can be a price worth paying for renewal.
.......LaGuardia’s failure, so far, to extend subway service to its door shows just how difficult fitting the pieces together is. (It might yet happen.) But the lack of public transit is to some extent a function of what was there before: That’s what happens when you’re building new on top of old. The refurbished airport is more efficient than it’s ever been, but the ghosts of its deficiencies linger.
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Airports, wrote the anthropologist Marc Augé in the early 1990s, are “non-places.” Like hotels, conference centers, and shopping malls, they could be distinguished precisely by their indistinctness. When you go inside most airports, Augé explained, you might as well be going anywhere—New York, Topeka, Paris, Macau.
The new LaGuardia aspires to be not just any airport but New York City’s airport. The fountain show in Terminal B offers place-ness; so do local-business outlet shops, installations by local artists, and expansive views of the Manhattan skyline. Indeed it was the lack of this quality—or at least an embarrassing mismatch of place—that inspired the first version of the airport, back in the ’30s. After landing at Newark, the only commercial option at the time, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia complained that his ticket said “New York,” but he had landed in New Jersey. He demanded to be flown to the city for real, kicking off a campaign that eventually led to the new development. (As mayor, La Guardia was an infrastructure guy, overseeing the construction of two city airports, including the one that would later take his name.)
Shame and pride are two sides of the same coin. Twice now, the dishonor of New York City’s airports has helped catalyze their future. So here’s the third and final lesson for reinvigorating the nation’s infrastructure: Americans pretend that reason drives big changes, but passion always takes the wheel. Even Cotton, of the Port Authority, seems to think that’s true. When I asked him what other municipalities might learn from LaGuardia, he first listed off some platitudes about ambition and capability, a commitment to overcome obstacles and go through walls. But then he acknowledged another, deeper motivation: “the dismal situation to which we had fallen.”
.......Rebuilding wasn’t easy, but the challenge of deciding to rebuild came first. Perhaps the pride of building is less important than the shame of having failed to do so. If the nation’s civil engineering has now become a joke, and “infrastructure week” is just a punch line, that could mean America is on the right track.
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I think that last statement sums up the Airtrain debacle, but LaGuardia still shines.
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NEW YORK is Back!
“Office buildings are our factories – whether for tech, creative or traditional industries we must continue to grow our modern factories to create new jobs,” said United States Senator Chuck Schumer.
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