A rendering the $10 billion plan to rehabilitate JFK Airport. | Office of the Governor Cuomo unveils $10B plan to overhaul JFK Airport

Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday unveiled a $10 billion plan to rehabilitate JFK Airport, one that calls for the consideration of a one-seat ride to the airport, a redesign of the facility itself and renovations to the major roads leading to it.

Private-sector parties would invest $7 billion in the sweeping, albeit still-vague, proposal, Dan Tishman, CEO of Tishman Construction Company, vice chairman of AECOM and chair of Cuomo's panel on airport renovations, told several hundred people at an Association for a Better New York lunch on Wednesday.


Cuomo billed his JFK vision as a necessary remedy for a languishing airport that will soon be unable to meet new capacity demands, and which — until his intervention — encapsulated the country's sluggish approach to infrastructure projects.

By the middle of the next decade, demand at JFK Airport, the region’s largest and the nation’s most popular with international travelers, “will exceed capacity by up to three million passengers annually,” according to a report issued in conjunction with Cuomo’s speech in the ballroom of the Midtown Manhattan Hilton Hotel.

Perhaps the boldest proposal the governor floated is a one-seat ride to the airport, something commonplace in global cities the world over.

“New York is the preeminent global financial capital and we should have a one-seat ride to our largest airport,” said Richard Barone, vice president for transportation at the Regional Plan Association.

The JFK "Vision Plan" calls on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which Cuomo effectively controls, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, over which the governor is exerting more control, to "conduct a comprehensive analysis to evaluate the possibility of a one-seat ride to JFK Airport from Penn Station New York, Grand Central Terminal, and/ or Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue/Barclays Station."

The idea is not a new one.

In 2001, AECOM wrote a study for the MTA entitled, “JFK One-Seat Ride Feasibility Study.” At the time, the Port Authority was building the AirTrain to JFK, and after studying dozens of alternatives, the engineering firm recommended building a hybrid train that could run on Long Island Rail Road tracks from Penn Station to Jamaica, where it would mount a flyover and continue along AirTrain tracks.

Nothing ever came of the 2001 AECOM proposal. And when, in 2013, POLITICO New York asked the Port Authority if it was under consideration, the bi-state authority said "it's not."

The Port Authority’s change of position undoubtedly has something to do with the Democratic governor, who is rumored to have national ambitions and has made mass transit and infrastructure a central part of his agenda in recent years.

"We really have not been investing in infrastructure," he said on Wednesday. "We have not really been building. We have not really been moving forward."

As a result, he argued, the region's airports are sorely lacking. That's why he and the Port Authority have launched a roughly $8.5 billion overhaul of La Gaurdia Airport.

And that's why he's now focusing on JFK Airport.

As part of his plan, Cuomo calls for rebuilding older terminals, like Terminals 1, 2 and 7, adding more gates, more than doubling the capacity of the existing AirTrain and implementing "global, world-class standards” at all JFK terminals.

The governor would alleviate congestion on the network of roads leading to the airport, perhaps by building a high occupancy vehicle lane on the Van Wyck, and improve airport parking. Airport taxiways would be expanded to reduce ground delays.

Further, Matthew Driscoll, the state's transportation commissioner, vowed to improve the Kew Gardens Interchange, where the Grand Central Parkway, Van Wyck Expressway, Jackie Robinson Expressway and Union Turnpike all intersect. There are currently 250,000 cars traveling through the intersection daily.

Cuomo described the project as necessary to compete globally.

"Nobody's going to run over New York, because if they do, they're going to have to run over my dead body first," he concluded.

The officials did not detail where the $7 billion in private financing might come from. Gert-Jan de Graaff, CEO of JFKIAT, which operates Terminal 4 at JFK, touted the news and said in a follow-up interview he would consider investing in it.

Shortly after the announcement, the president of 32BJ, the union representing airport workers, slammed the proposal for excluding any talk of wages.

"This is a significant, significant investment in infrastructure and the part that is significantly and really incredibly disappointing is that it is a missed opportunity to upgrade the workforce as well," union president Hector Figueroa said in an interview.

Read the plan here: http://on.ny.gov/2iC3tFR