REA Final - 22 Dec 20 - eBook - 1682 pages

By then, construction could be underway on a planned 1.5-mile Airtrain route that would run along the Grand Central Parkway to connect riders from Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station in Manhattan in 16 minutes to the Willets Point subway station in Queens, and to the airport in six minutes from there. “We are in the environmental review phase; we finished the public hearings,” says Smyth. Smyth says the port authority expects a Record of Decision from the federal government next spring, and then can get a contractor on board. The agency says the elevated guideway will require no right-of-way acquisitions. In an online presentation about Airtrain delivered to the Association for a Better New York in late September, Port Authority Executive Director Rick Cotton said of the need for it: “Travel will come back. The traffic will come back. The congestion will come back and the pollution will come back.”