Conductor, Please Drop Me Off a Mile From the Airport

In California, We Wouldn’t Dream of Connecting Our Trains and Planes. That’d Be Too Far-Sighted.

A riddle. If you land at a big-city airport and there’s no train there, where are you?

Answer: California.

Yes, San Francisco, I know you’re the exception, with a BART train stop inside San Francisco International Airport (SFO). But the California rule is that we’ll invest billions in our airports and billions in our trains, but we wouldn’t dream of directly connecting the two.

Instead, we taunt those who dare to dream.

How else to explain the fact that so many of California’s urban trains and trolleys come close to the airports—but not close …