PA: Allow extra 90 minutes just to get to LaGuardia Airport – WBNews

Travelers using LaGuardia Airport this Presidents Day weekend are being warned to give themselves an extra 90 minutes just to get to the airport. Officials have been saying for months that travelers should give themselves at least two hours to get off the congested Grand Central Parkway, through airport roads, past security checkpoints and to their planes. The snarled traffic at LaGuardia dates to June, when work began on a decadelong, $8 billion dollar reconstruction project. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who has pushed the LaGuardia redevelopment, said Wednesday that the traffic situation at the airport was “unacceptable,” and that he has ordered the Port Authority, which operates the airport, to come up with a remedy. “We have a new team that is going to come in and be put in place to manage the airport better, logistically, during this difficult time where we’re building one airport and taking down and operating the other,” he told reporters at an event on Long Island. He said people may no longer be able to pick up and drop off passengers at terminals. “We’re going to have to re-engineer literally the whole airport to come up with different drop-offs, short-term parking, long-term parking that is further removed from the terminals and that is what we’re working through now,” he said. The MTA, which the governor controls, said Wednesday that for this holiday weekend the Q70 bus to LaGuardia from transit hubs in Woodside and Jackson Heights would be free from 12:01 a.m. Thursday to…more detail