R2| Thursday, November 14, 2019 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

SASHA MASLOV FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (2)

TAMINGTHE

RIDE-SHARE

RODEO

BEST AIRPORTS 2019

Ride-share drivers at the Los

Angeles airport’s pickup area.

FROM TOP: ILLUSTRATION BY RYAN INZANA; PATRICK T. FALLON/BLOOMBERG NEWS

flights so LaGuardia and Newark

aren’t inundated at peak hours,

when most people want to go.

Fewer flights on bigger aircraft

might help, too.

In the large airport category, the

lowest grades from readers went to

Newark, followed by Los Angeles

International and Kennedy: that

trio each scored a C-minus.

At Newark, the steel structure

of a new Terminal One was just

topped out in October. The first

new gates in that $3 billion facility

will open in a bit more than two

years. Terminal One will replace

the current Terminal A, the oldest

and dingiest of Newark’s terminals.

Design work has begun on Termi-

nal Two, which will replace Termi-

nal B.

The Port Authority is also build-

ing a consolidated rental car facil-

ity at Newark, and plans to extend

the PATH train to that airport to

provide an easier rail connection

from lower Manhattan.

At JFK, groundbreaking is likely

next year on a new Terminal 1, a 3

million square-foot facility that

will replace the existing terminals

1 and 2. It’s being developed by a

consortium that includes four in-

ternational airlines and will, like

the LaGuardia main terminal, be

operated by a private company.

In addition, JetBlue will get a

new international terminal with 12

gates large enough to accommo-

date wide-body jets. In all, im-

provements at JFK will cost more

than $13 billion.

The Port Authority is also mov-

ing forward on plans to add a train

close to LaGuardia and update the

trains at Kennedy and Newark that

loop around terminals.

Travelers despise these airports—and

the people who run them know it.

The three New York-area air-

ports again ranked last in the WSJ’s

annual airport survey, repeating

last year’s dismal showing. New

York Kennedy and Newark Liberty

International finished last among large airports. LaGuardia Airport

ranked worst among medium-size airports, based on statistical

analysis and reader comments.

“That’s why we have the investment program we have,” says Rick

Cotton, executive director of the Port Au-

thority of New York and New Jersey,

which operates the airports. “We, the Port

Authority, have to look reality in the eye

and we have to recognize still that our

airports by and large come in at the bot-

tom of virtually every passenger survey.”

Wall Street Journal readers ranked La-

Guardia the worst airport in an extensive

survey on airports, giving it a D+ grade.

The average grade from subscribers is

part of the 15 categories used in the over-

all rankings.

“Get there super early and be prepared

to be pushed and shoved around,” one

reader suggested in the Journal’s anony-

mous survey of subscribers.

Mr. Cotton thinks the $24 billion re-

building at the three airports will change

that. LaGuardia is furthest ahead of the

three, though not yet halfway to comple-

tion. New facilities have tons of natural

light and breathtaking views of New York,

much better food and retail options, and chic bathrooms.

Today, one-third of the gates being used at the airport nearest to

Manhattan are new gates. An arrival and departures building for the

main terminal will open in the middle of next year, completely chang-

ing the look of the decrepit passenger depot. With that, 70% of the

new roadways will open, Mr. Cotton says.

The $8 billion project should be mostly completed by 2022. At

that point, LaGuardia’s central terminal, as well as the Delta terminal,

will have been rebuilt. And it will have happened while the airport

continued to grow. Passenger traffic has hit record numbers despite

the construction disruption. The Port Authority had expected LaGuar-

dia traffic to drop during construction.

The disruption is severe. Traffic around the airport

is miserable. Passengers arriving at the new part of

the central terminal have a very long walk to a taxi

stand, and then most of the time must board a bus to

get to the taxi queue located in a remote lot. Even at

midnight in the rain.

“It will take almost as long to get from LGA to your

destination as your flight took,” one reader said.

Hardly any of these renovations address delays

and congestion on the airfield itself, a prime problem

at LaGuardia. The rebuilding will include some addi-

tional taxiways, which may shave some delay, but it

will be decades, if ever, before any new runways are

built in New York.

For the 12 months ended in July, only 70% of flights

at LaGuardia got to the gate within 15 minutes of

scheduled arrival time. Only Newark had a worse on-

time record among the 40 airports the Journal exam-

ined—66% for that period. LaGuardia had the second-

highest rate of canceled flights of any of the 40

airports in the WSJ airport rankings—only Chicago

Midway was worse.

Mr. Cotton thinks airlines need to spread out

NYC Airports:

The Best At

Being the Worst

Construction

around LaGuardia

Airport in October.

BYSCOTTMCCARTNEY

‘It will take

almost as

long to

get from

LGA to

your

destination

as your

flight took.’

line at airports, compounding traf-

fic on terminal roads.

At many airports tweaking their

ride-share logistics, including in

Los Angeles and San Francisco, tra-

ditional car services continue to

collect passengers at the curb.

Steven Everett, a full-time

driver for Uber and Lyft, says one

day he circled Chicago’s Midway

airport 20 times before he made

it into the line of about 10 cars

waiting to match with PIN-bear-

ing passengers. Better to circle

the airport burning gas, he says,

than risk getting stuck in the lot

down the road where drivers wait

to be called to the terminal. “It’s

packed like sardines,” he says.

Chicago’s bigger airport, O’Hare

International, isn’t using the PIN

system or a remote lot for passen-

gers. Occasionally, wait times there

have approached an hour when the

staging area where drivers wait to

be matched with a rider—many call

it the pig pen—gets so full that

cars can barely move.

The city replaced a stop sign

at the lot with a stoplight this

year to let more drivers out at a

time. A second lot was added

down the road, where more driv-

ers can wait for their turn to ap-

proach the terminal.

“We do constantly make con-

certed efforts to monitor any fac-

tors that might impact wait

times,” Chicago’s Department of

Aviation said in written responses

to questions about ride-hailing at

the city’s airports.

Employees at Lyft and Uber

say the companies are talking

with many U.S. airports about

how to reconfigure terminals that

weren’t designed for ride-sharing.

“We really want to work with air-

ports one on one,” says Rachel

Cargo, Uber’s senior manager for

airport operations.

At various times this

year, Uber and Lyft drivers

in San Francisco took more

than a million passengers a

month to or from theair-

port, up from about

100,000 a month in 2014.

“Cars were lining up out

onto the freeway,” says air-

port spokesman Doug

Yakel. In June, San Fran-

cisco airport moved ride-

share pickups from domes-

tic flights to a garage

adjacent to that terminal.

Mr. Yakel says his col-

leagues timed it as a three-

minute walk from domestic

arrival halls. Many passen-

gers say the schlep takes

longer. Drivers say rider

confusion over where to

wait and how to request a

ride has cost them busi-

ness. “There were some

unintended consequences,”

Mr. Yakel says.

Similar frustrations are

simmering in Los Angeles,

where the airport is under-

going a $14 billion renova-

tion before the 2028 Sum-

mer Olympics. In October,

Uber and Lyft pickups

moved to a lot next to the terminals.

Airport officials say passengers can reach the lot

with a short walk or aboard frequent shuttles. They

weren’t frequent enough for Rich Greenfield, a finan-

cial-research analyst, who landed at the airport on

Oct. 29, the first day the new lot was in service. One

shuttle was too full, so he couldn’t board. He got on

the next and took a seat, he says. Some passengers

who had given seats to older riders were ordered off

because standing in the aisles wasn’t allowed.

At the lot, Mr. Greenfield found a swarm of pas-

sengers trying to figure out where to meet their

UberXL, Lyft Line or other ride-share drivers. Em-

ployees from the airport and the ride-share compa-

nies there tried to explain how the system worked.

Mr. Greenfield opted for a regular taxi, a fleet also

relegated to the new lot. It had been nearly an hour

since he landed.

“It was an absolutely horrid experience,” he says.

Mr. Greenfield has another trip from New York to Los

Angeles later this month. Although dreading the

ride-share lot, he doesn’t

know how to avoid it.

Officials at the airport

say wait times have

eased as passengers at

the lot adapt to the code

system that matches

them with the next Lyft

or Uber driver in line. It

is essentially a return to

a cab stand.

Both ride-sharing com-

panies are using the same

code system at about a

half-dozen U.S. airports.

Some drivers for Uber

and Lyft say the compa-

nies are directing too

many of them to wait in

W

ith cars crowding their curbs, airports are

still sorting out how to handle ride-hailing

companies. Boston’s Logan International Air-

port is the latest to relocate Lyft and Uber

drivers from roads around the terminals to a

parking garage. Los Angeles International

Airport and San Francisco International Air-

port made similar shifts in recent months.

Los Angeles, New York’s LaGuardia Air-

port and Midway International Airport in

Chicago also have instituted a system that

uses numeric codes to match drivers withpassengers in line for rides.

Lyft and Uber introduced the system at Portland International Airport

in Oregon earlier this year. When passengers click in their apps to

summon a ride, they receive a code rather than the details of a spe-

cific driver. They give that code to a driver waiting in line for the next

fare, who uses it to unlock the passenger’s name and destination.

The goal is to reduce the surge in congestion on airport roads.

Demand for air travel has grown since the 2008 financial crisis,

straining airport infrastructure. At the same time, ride-hailing and

sharing has accelerated from zero to become the most popular way

to get to and from many airports.

Airports

scramble to

get a handle

on the

surging

traffic that is

clogging

entrances

and exits

BYPATRICKMCGROARTY