There's certainly a lot of variation, as I also noted above.
And sometimes the planners don't help much either, as is the case with all three of our New York airports, where the whole AirTrain concept is completely botched.
- At Kennedy, the AirTrain's stations are not in, but sort of near, the terminals. That means you have to drag your stuff outside, across the roadways, and then up stairs or elevator to the train. And then, you have a choice of going to the commuter rail station (about 3 miles) or the subway (about 1.5 miles) or the parking lots. Where you have to change AGAIN to get into the city. They had an option: there's an unused Long Island Rail Road route that goes straight to mid-Manhattan and could have been connected to an airport station.
- At Newark, the AirTrain does get close enough to the terminals, but again...it takes you to parking, or to a connection far away for the rail line to Newark and New York. Only now is the PATH line, a rail system that serves both New Jersey and New York City being extended to the airport...or rather, once again, not to the airport but to the end of the AirTrain line. For $1.5 billion.
- And at Laguardia, where part of the big news of the new rebuilding project is a very first ever rail connection to the city...they're planning yet another AirTrain to connect the airport to rail stations instead of a direct connection!
You just have to conclude that all this planning is done by people who have chauffeurs or helicopters to get them to the plane on time...