From (Crumbling) Airport to (Broken) Escalators: An Infrastructure Odyssey<br />The Sunday before last, as I emerged tired and dispirited from Penn Station after a two-plus hour trip from the Newark airport, I found myself pondering President Trump’s campaign<br />pledge “to spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment,” a theme he raised in this year’s State of the Union address and is expected to address again next week.<br />My trip to Manhattan from Newark Liberty International Airport began at Terminal A. Newark is a finalist in Amazon’s quest for a second headquarters location, but one look at<br />that terminal should be enough to send the e-commerce giant’s representatives back to Seattle.<br />“If Newark airport kept all the money it generated from landing fees it could be a world-class airport,” said Tom Wright, president of the Regional Plan Association, an independent urban research group<br />that focuses on infrastructure and public policy in the New York area.<br />A major issue for the New York area’s airports is that the Port Authority is allowed to divert revenues collected from airline passengers to nonairport uses, likes the PATH train<br />and the new Oculus station at the World Trade Center, a project that went grossly over budget.<br />After a 10-minute walk in Terminal A, I boarded the AirTrain for what is supposed to be an 11-minute trip to the Newark Airport train station.
