Airport Rail Links Around the World

With all the talk about a possible airport link between I’ve been investigating what types of airport links there are around the world. Here is a short list of the systems that I’ve looked into (I’m sure there are lots more):

North America:

• Chicago, New York JFK, New York Newark, Philadelphia, San Francisco

Europe:

• Paris, London Heathrow (Express, Connect, & Piccadilly underground), London Gatwick, Rome, Milan, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Madrid, Frankfurt & Stockholm

Asia:

• Hong Kong

There are essentially three types of services (and three types of price ranges) shown in different colors in the graph:

• Shuttle (blue): Door-to-door service from the airport to a downtown train station with no intermediate stops. Generally the fastest and most expensive mode
• Regional (red): Suburban or regional train service from a station at an airport to the downtown. Prices and travel speed is quite variable.
• Metro (pink): Metro service from a stop at the airport to the city center. Generally the slowest and least expensive mode

Some conclusions:

• The two most expensive are Arlanda Express to Stockholm followed by Heathrow Express to London Paddington.
• There is not much correlation between the distance & journey time and price.
• The price charged for the train service has to be competitive with the existing taxi service of $25 for a taxi to go to downtown.