Surprise! Albany's impressive train station

It may not be located downtown, but Albany, N.Y. has one impressive train station.

Climbing up from the platforms, arriving passengers enter a grand hall that feels unexpectedly monumental. It's way better, for example, than what Amtrak is stuck with at Penn Station in New York City.

All this for Albany?

Well, yes. Albany claims to be the ninth-busiest station in the whole Amtrak system (a statistic I found on ever-reliable Wikipedia), something that seems rather surprising at first glance.

But then again, it makes sense when you consider that Albany boasts a level of passenger rail service that most small cities in the United States haven't seen since World War II.

Not only does the Capital Region enjoy frequent service to Penn Station (14 round-trips each weekday, according to the current Amtrak timetable), but it also maintains frequent service to Buffalo (three trains daily each way), as well as nightly service west to Cleveland and Chicago (sleeper on the Lake Shore Limited, anyone?), east to Boston, and north to the thriving metropolis of Rutland, Vt.

Add in two exotic international trains that cross the Canadian border – the Maple Leaf to/from Toronto and the Adirondack to/from Montreal, which both pass through here each day – and you've got yourself a schedule that most cities of similar size would envy.

So it adds up to one busy place – about 700,000 rail passengers a year, again according to Wikipedia. And things will only get busier due to a recent agreement with freight carrier CSX for Amtrak to take control of the tracks from here south to Poughkeepsie, a big chunk of the route to New York City.

This will improve dispatching and also clear the way for track improvements to speed up travel time to/from the Big Apple, so more service is planned for the future – so much so that a fourth platform is planned in additional to the existing three.

Just as the level of passenger service evokes a bygone era (a nightly sleeper to Chicago?), so does the passenger terminal. It's big – not quite cathedral scale, but big enough to give the Capital Region a rail gateway that the community can be proud of.

The main hall, ringed by balconies and sporting an impressively tall windows, has a genuinely grand feeling. The peaked roof soaring above evokes a feeling of being in some great Gothic hunting lodge or library. The tall windows looked impressive and inspiring even in the darkness.

The colors work together like players in a string quartet: elegant pink granite, rich brown wood, green-painted steel structural and ornamental elements, cream-colored walls, all of it anchored and reflected and amplified by very attractive designs in the floor tiling.

And it's a busy enough place to support a nice range of retailers, including a full sit-down restaurant, a big bookstore/newsstand, and other shops. It was enough to be useful, anyway, to those of us on the Lake Shore Limited (Boston to Chicago, with a two-hour layover in Albany) who wanted to escape the train for awhile and wander around.

All this in a station that, praise be, was actually designed and built in the modern era, opening in 2002.

I'd been through it before, but never had a chance to explore the station since it opened. (In earlier days, my primary memories of Albany are of the downtown bus station, which I used to visit a girlfriend. Later, while in college in the 1980s, I would take Amtrak from NYC up to visit a high school friend at Rennsalaer Polytechnic Institute, but I recall the station being little more than a platform in the middle of nowhere.

Of course prior to all this, Albany was home to Albany Union Station, an enormous Beaux Arts station from the late 19th century right in center of downtown. Here it is:

With rail service in decline, then-tenant Penn Central moved out in December 1968, and the majestic building fell into serious disrepair. Fortunately, a bank renovated it in the 1980s, and it's back in business today, though not as a rail station.

Which takes us back to the present station, about a mile-and-a-half away and across the Hudson from downtown Albany. Although it was dark, I ventured out front to see if the station's exterior lived up to the inside. I wasn't disappointed. The place has the same feel – a structure of consequence that gives the feeling that something important happens here.

And perched high above the main entrance was, yes, a giant clock (non-digital) with four sides that must have been visible from some distance. The faces were lit, too and each seemed to be displaying the correct time, too.

Yes, I suppose overall the place does have a kind of modern synthesized Disney World feel to it. The clock tower in particular looks like something out of sci-fi movie – or maybe a giant pencil eraser. In terms of a local reference point, it might be a kind of stripped-down version of the Governor's Mansion:

Is this...

...an homage to this?

Perhaps this feeling is a function of the place just being so – well, new. After all, we don't see many brand spanking new train stations in this country anymore.

In fact, the only other one I can think of is the big new Lautenberg transfer station in Secaucus, N.J, which rises out of the marshes and does its best to channel the ghost of the original Penn Station, the next stop on the line. The Lautenberg station, too, feels kind of theme-park-ish, perhaps just by virtue of its newness. But hey – it took Grand Central Station a century to become the Grand Central Station we know today.

One element that adds to the station's role as a transport hub is a surprisingly robust bus service. I remember my RPI friend joking about the local bus system's inane radio commercials, but there seems to be a heckuva lot more options than in my hometown of Manchester, N.H. Check out the rack of timetables!

Maybe it helps to be the capital city of the “Empire” state, with all the prestige (and money) that comes with it. Maybe it's no coincidence that the Albany area also boasts a first-rate airport with a wonderful contemporary terminal, as well. (I passed through there in March, 2012.)

Minor quibbles: the bridge above the platforms forms a kind of airline gate waiting area, complete with TV set droning on. Lose it!

But no matter. Albany's train station is a delightful surprise, especially in the context of the revenue-starved state of passenger rail service in the United States. In some places, the detail is extraordinary, such as this frosted and gridded ceiling on the stairways down to the platform.

I would love to see it during the day, with sunlight flooding not only the stairwells, but streaming through the giant windows and down from the glass cupola set way up in the ceiling, like some kind of oversized lighthouse.

So take a lesson from Albany, other cities. A passenger rail station erected in our lifetime does NOT have to have the inspiration and ambiance of a Quonset hut. No indeed – it can be an inviting beacon of light and space, which is certainly was when I passed through.

Good article about airline terminals

It's understandable that the mainstream media doesn't run a lot of stuff about airport terminal design. Why worry about that when we're all wondering who will finally be Kelly's permanent replacement for Regis Philbin?

But once in awhile, you get something surprisingly thorough. In this case, it's a good piece with national scope by Curtis Tate, a reporter for the McClatchy Newspaper group that I found on the Web site of the Tacoma (Wash.) News-Tribune.

U.S. Airport Terminals Upgrade to First Class

One thing I didn't realize was that Kansas City is planning to somehow integrate its three curving terminals into one facility. Good luck with that! But a quick search found a good Kansas City star piece from 2011 about the whole issue:

Like It Or Not, KCI Needs To Change

While they're at it, they should do something about the MCI / KCI confusion that plagues this airport. The FAA code is MCI, for 'Mid-Continent International.' But everywhere else, it's KCI, for obvious reasons: highway signs, map, the airport itself. It's not a life-or-death issue, but it offends the anal-retentive geek in me.

The article speaks of building a completely new terminal "to the south" while the existing complex continues to operate. I had a hard time visualizing this, but then I found this diagram from the KCI (not MCI?) Master Plan.

I think the layout of the terminal and gate piers is just sketched in to put something in there, as they're still years away from hiring an architect. Anyway, must be nice to have so much open land around to use! (Compare that to the cramped conditions of so many other airports, hemmed in by development.)

Also in Kansas (getting back to the McClatchy article), it's great to hear in the McClatchy piece that Wichita is going forward with a new terminal. I visited the current terminal this spring and it had all the presence and character of a junior high cafeteria.

On another note: Things have been a bit slow on this blog over the summer, but that's about to change, with visits to Dallas, Denver, and other airports in the offing. Plus I'll fill in the gaps with some visits to airports in my own corner of the world, New England, including Portland, Maine; Providence, R.I.; Hartford, Conn.; and Burlington, Vt.

Fasten your seat belts!

Now playing at LAX: the "Walk of Shame"

Here's an excerpt from a piece by writer Ted Reed about an ugly airline terminal that I just noticed that was posted today on thestreet.com.

Ugly Airports: LAX's 1,000-Foot Walk of Shame
Ted Reed
06/07/12 - 06:11 AM EDT

LOS ANGELES (TheStreet) -- At Los Angeles International Airport, the world's sixth busiest airport and the third busiest international gateway in the United States, you would expect terminals and passageways that are stately yet functional.

Instead, if you are walking between terminals five and six, you get a long, narrow corridor bathed in fluorescent light, without windows or clear signage, filled with echoes of conversations and seemingly leading from one dead end to another. The corridor provides first-time users with the sense of being in the wrong place with no option but to continue, as the threat of a missed connection hovers.

In short, you feel lost in a horror movie or, at best, trapped into undergoing a clinical test for elevated stress levels.

Recently Preston Czigans, an Atlanta-area guitarist on his way to a session to record background tracks for commercials, was changing planes when he came upon this seeming passageway to hell. Czigans was flying on Delta (DAL) from Atlanta to San Francisco via Los Angeles.

"I got off the plane at LAX and followed signs," Czigans recalled. "I went down an escalator. It dead-ended at a wall, and you could only turn left into this long, empty hallway. I thought 'I'm not supposed to be here, I'm in the wrong place," but I noticed a few stragglers making the trip down the hallway so I took off walking.

"It was probably about 1,000 feet, a sterile environment with a white floor and white walls with a few pictures that made it look like somebody had started to decorate it, then forgot about it. There was no signage.

"When I got to the end, it was another dead end, with an escalator to go up one story to the terminal," Czigans said. "Sadly, this is a passageway used by countless thousands of travelers every day."

To read more about this situation, and get an explanation of how it came to be, check out the complete post. And while you're at it, check out The Street's coverage of ugly airports and beautiful airports, too.

SFO Terminal 3: Opportunity Lost

A brief trip to San Francisco led to an encounter with Terminal 3, a relatively new facility that houses the West Coast hub of United Airlines. It's certainly nice enough. But as a major transcontinental hub for what is currently the world's largest airline, it's a major let-down.

First the good news. It's new and clean, and reasonably uncluttered by retail distractions. You don't feel like you're in a shopping mall. You don't feel like you're being subjected to a retail environment designed to suck every last dollar out of your wallet. You know you're in an airport. You can see the aircraft and the field beyond, such as here, in a long connecting corridor:


And in a nice touch, a gate concourse atrium has replicas of vintage aircraft hanging in a few places.


And yes, it seems to move passengers in and out efficiently, though not by means of any exciting innovations. It's all been done before, same as anywhere else.

But coming in and then heading out, the place seemed a little antiseptic. It's a little too white, a little too cool. A little too blandly corporate, as if it were built on spec in the hopes that somebody in search of Class A airline terminal space would move in, which surprised me. Get a load of this scene:


Why is this a lost opportunity? Because United, the sole occupant of Terminal 3, is a long-term tenant at SFO, one of the carrier's longtime strongholds. This airport has been the airline's original transcontinental base going back to the dawn of commercial aviation. It's also where United first flung Boeing 377 Stratocruisers out into the Pacific after World War II to conquer Hawaii and turn it into the major tourist destination it is today.


Later still, when United acquired Pan Am's Pacific routes in 1985, no station on the network felt the impact more than SFO. Its importance broadened into a global hub connecting far-flung Pacific rim destinations from Seoul and Sydney to Bangkok and Beijing.

Is any of this reflected in the terminal that greeted me when I stepped off my 757 from Boston? No? Instead, I got an off-the-shelf gate area that fronted a corridor with a raised ceiling, yes. But it could have been anywhere. The color was white and the contours included chunky rounded angles. It's like they made a deal to subliminally promote Marshmallow Fluff.


In most of the terminal, the only thing setting off the white white white was floor coverings that were drab drab drab, featuring a pattern designed to evoke -- I don't know, muddy pasta?


It seemed especially in-your-face in low-ceiling passages such as the one above. Yes, nothing evokes the aspirational aspect of flight than a tunnel with a depressing carpet pattern. Did United authorize this to make their cabin interiors seem clean by comparison?

Seriously, I was at a loss. Instead of saying anything about what kind of airline United was, the place was as blankly corporate as the way United's uninspired post-merger "compromise" livery: the Continental tail and blue/gold colors, UNITED in a blah all-caps font on the plane, and we're done. Out went the tulip and the remnants of three paint schemes still on some of the United fleet. We're lucky they kept Gershwin's 'Rhapsody in Blue' on the payroll.

Look at this below. Airport, or bank lobby, or shopping mall? Or blank dull nothing?


If this scene were a person, it would be a robot. With plants.

As a major hub for the combined carrier, you think there'd be a little hometown pride evident in a new and modern terminal. Instead, we get a few plants and, incredibly, an exhibit about vintage sewing machines. Sewing machines?


About the plants: Weirdly, at one place they come in huge sizes that seem out of proportion with human beings. This is just scary, like a scene out of 'Little Shop of Horrors.' Someone tell those people not to get too close!


Contrast this with what United enjoys at Chicago O'Hare: the jazzy Terminal One complex, designed by Helmut Jahn in the late 1980s to accommodate Chicago's role as the airline's major transfer hub in the post-dereg era. Even 25 years of creeping commercial crud can't diminish the excitement that this place lends the flying experience, even if you're just changing planes.

In United's San Francisco hub, you get all the excitement of a conference room in the company where Dilbert works. There's art here and there, but it seems to be the result of someone's checklist rather than any coherent plan to celebrate journeying or the magic of flight.


Even when they try, as in this stairway corridor in the check-in area, the effect is rather cold and heavy and plastic, as if the decorative scheme was based on the uniforms of Darth Vader's Imperial Storm Troopers.


Maybe I'm missing something, but as I walked from the gate to the baggage area and then to hotel shuttle van curb, Terminal 3 said nothing to me about where I was or the airline I just flew and its long and storied presence here. Instead of feeling like I was part of a long tradition of a great city welcoming travellers from all over the world, I felt like I was attending a newspaper advertising sales conference at the Holidome in Topeka, Kansas. What a lost opportunity.

Out on the curb, I finally noticed something that indicated a little pride of place. It was a banner celebrating the return of the A380, the world's largest passenger aircraft, to regular service at SFO.


The airline? Lufthansa, which doesn't even use this terminal.

P.S. I got a chance to peak briefly at the adjacent international terminal, another gleaming new facility. This is what we're putting up against the massive showplaces in Beijing, Hong Kong, Bangkok, and elsewhere. It's another future-is-now disappointment, filled with spaces such as these:



It may be new, but it's all a small-minded pale shadow of the Asian airports with which it competes.

Secaucus Junction: the ghost of Penn?

With transportation, the unexpected is often a bad thing. But that wasn't the case on Sunday, March 18, when I encountered The Frank J. Lautenberg Rail Station at Secaucus, New Jersey.

Seacaucus, New Jersey? Unexpected is right. I was taking New Jersey Transit into New York City (something I'd never done before) from Middletown, N.Y., which required changing trains at Secaucus Junction.

Well, so much for single-train service into Manhattan, which Metro-North offers into Grand Central from Westchester County and Connecticut. Still, I expected a simple change of trains at some dingy junction, maybe across the same platform if I was lucky.

What I got was a trip through the most ambitious train station in to be opened in North America in the 21st century.

Really. The station, which opened in 2003, features a soaring central atrium that sorts connecting passengers from no less than nine separate New Jersey Transit Lines. Some run north-south on the lines out of Hoboken, while others run east-west on the lines coming out of Penn Station in Manhattan.

The place is immaculate and inspiring. Coming up from the platforms to the atrium for the first time was actually exciting. Ahead, beyond the escalators and far above us, you could see a glass roof, which was letting sunlight stream into the cathedral-like space, so much so that it was reaching us down below.



Up we went, into the big space, looking for the next train to Penn Station. Clear color-coded signs and train indicator boards make this easy, removing the anxiety of an unfamiliar space and allowing one to enjoy the experience. Most importantly, I felt like I had arrived somewhere. And so I had -- at an important gateway, just one stop to Penn Station in New York.

How amazing to be in a new train station in the United States -- one with an interior on a scale at least equal to a suburban shopping mall!

And then I realized: what we had here was a worthy gesture to make up for the loss of the original Penn Station in Manhattan a half-century ago. We can't get the old Penn Station back (and the current one may never get remade), but Secaucus Junction, next station down the line on the Northeast Corridor, can at least provide a sense of occasion for some passengers about to enter one of the world's great cities.

Look around, and you'll see the Lautenberg station is one big tribute to the old Penn Station. You'll find the old Penn's distinctive "X" cross-bracing echoed everywhere - lamps and benches and gates and even as decorative patterns on the atrium's interior.




All right, this bench is a little too much tribute...


The platforms on the east-west tracks are clad in a faux exterior highlighted by arching windows that mimic the old Penn Station's magnificent iron-and-glass train shed and its barrel-vaulted waiting room. Here's the best view I could get of that vista, which faces the north (so no sunlight) and is blocked by a highway embankment.


Not exactly the same as the original, but you can sense the echoes:


And all that's ironic, too, because when the old Penn Station was demolished, much of the rubble wound up dumped in the New Jersey marshes not far from here. It seems as if the spirit of the old Penn Station has been conjured from the swamps and given a home in the Lautenberg station. So, in addition to elevating the spirit, the new place actually helps exorcise a certain amount of leftover societal guilt. And that's a good thing.

While what's left of Penn Station endures in the middle of Midtown Manhattan, the Lautenberg station stands in the middle of nowhere -- out in the Meadowlands, that curious industrial marshland west of the Palisades, home to mudflats and truck terminals and concrete pillars supporting the New Jersey Turnpike. How weird to close enough to the skyscrapers of New York City to see them catch the afternoon, but be standing in what looks like a New Jersey version of the Everglades.

I went down the escalators to walk outside, and found the station to be just that: = in the middle of impasssable marsh. Take a few steps out from a gravel employee parking lot, and you'd be lost in weeds taller than a man.


If nothing else, I understood the significance of the sculpture, Twenty First Century Cattail, that dominates the station's atrium. (I understand that at night, the cattails are illuminated in the New Jersey Transit colors of orange, blue, and purple.)


Why was this station built? Apparently the two lines crossed here at least since the Penn Station tunnels into Manhattan were opened in 1911, but the private companies then had no incentive to interchange passengers with competitors. As the 20th century rolled on, the government takeover of passenger service caused this mentality to evaporate, and in the 1960s the idea of creating a transfer station at Secaucus began to gain ground.

Prior to Secaucus Junction, New Jersey passengers headed to Midtown were forced to ride a circuitous route down to Hoboken, and then take a PATH train under the Hudson River to lower Manhattan, then up as far north as West 33rd St. at Penn Station. Allowing a change at Secaucus for direct trains into Penn Station would save a lot of time, and also open up plenty of other previously impossible connections, greatly improving the flexibility of New Jersey's commuter transit network.

It took years for the plan to percolate, but it finally found a champion in Frank Lautenberg, U.S. Senator from New Jersey and an ardent public transportation backer. In the 1990s, Lautenberg secured hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding, and the new rail station began to take shape, both as a transportation hub and as a spur to development in the local area. In anticipation of its use, the station even got its own custom-built exit off the nearby New Jersey Turnpike.

I really can't address the political issues of any project such as this, especially one in New Jersey and involving this much concrete. However, I can say that the station really looks like it was designed for the day when it would be surrounded by a dense walkable urban community. It even includes a clock tower, cleverly incorporated as part of the elevator shaft.


But for now, it still stands in the middle of nowhere. A parking lot has been built nearby, but the surrounding area remains a grim place of rusting warehouses and chainlink fences and tidal marshes.

After the place opened, people complained that the $600 million station was underutilized, especially for all the money that was lavished on it. (They also complained of a rank marsh smell on the open platforms.) Transit planners countered with the idea that Secaucus Junction would prove crucial in the long run, in the same way that development would follow a highway exit.

Let's hope they're right, because Secaucus Junction is too good a station to become a target for public transportation foes. Like Penn Station and Grand Central, it was built not for expediency but for the ages. That it was built with public money rather than private capital is amazing for our day and age, so let's hope the long-term vision comes to pass.

In the meantime, the New Jersey Transit network has been transformed. Passenger counts have risen from just 4,500 a day in 2003 to more than 17,000 a day, making it the fourth-busiest on the N.J. Transit system. Secaucus Junction has also allowed the addition of train service to the Meadowlands, the big sports arena that also rises from the marshes.


And just passing through Secaucus can lift the spirits of public transportation supporters, because it allows you to believe that yes, it can matter somewhere in the car-crazed United States. Trains come and go every few minutes, complemented by all of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor service, which doesn't stop but passes through the upper levels. (While waiting for my Manhattan train, an Amtrak Acela bound for Penn Station barrelled right past us at high speed.)

Syracuse Airport (SYR): Help wanted

A typical still life at Syracuse Airport.

It wouldn't be fair to say much about Syracuse (N.Y.) Hancock International Airport right now, as the main terminal building is undergoing a refurbishment that's scrambled the place somewhat. But during a recent visit (Sunday, March 18, 2012) while passing through the area, I found a lot that looks like it won't change anytime soon, including a monumentally ugly concrete canopy that gets my vote for the single worst feature of any airline terminal I've ever encountered in North America.

Eager for more? Let's go!

Syracuse is a bigger city than you might expect (145,000 people in town, more than 600,000 in the area), so you'd assume the region would be eager to make a good impression to visitors. Home to Syracuse University (duh!), it's also where a lot of military personnel pass through on their way to and from Fort Drum. So you'd think Syracuse would support a robust air service.

You'd think. Well, Syracuse, like many small and mid-size airports, has seen a recent decline in air service, to the point where the majors rely on regional jets almost exclusively. It's not exactly booming, so there probably isn't a lot of revenue available for improvements. And that's too bad, because what Syracuse has now is a weird set-up: a tired main terminal from the pre-deregulation era that's been almost completely swallowed up by ill-planned add-ons, in front and on both sides.

The airlines occupy space in newer wings on either side of the original terminal. Each wing features a two-story ceiling, but any grandeur is hobbled by a series of strange-looking circular beams that stretch across the space. They're can't be structurally needed, so the question arises: "What were they thinking?"

After check-in, passengers must ascend to the second level, where they cross over the ticketing hall. Here we go up the escalator, accompanied by sad-looking vegetation in bulbous stepped planters that resemble giant urinals:

And what says upstate New York more than palm fronds?

And get a load of that white cladding, which is all over the place. It makes everything else look dirty in comparison, especially the gray flooring, which may have been washed an hour ago but would still look dirty and depressing. The white even succeeds in making the dirt in the planters look dirty, but I digress.

The escalator tops out on a walkway over the check-in area below, but you can't see anything because those white beams are positioned exactly right to block the view! Again: "What were they thinking?"

About all that white...let's see, Syracuse produced most of the nation's salt up until 1900. Is this a reference? Well, whatever the reason, all the relentless white makes the place feel like a clean room that's not really that clean.

Speaking of charm: How's this for a weird, uninviting space? What's with the bank of track lighting under the escalator?

I really don't know how much of this is temporary, but a lot of it seems the result of badly planned add-ons over the years that created weird cul-de-sacs and uninviting dank corridors — too many for a relatively small airport:

Hey, where is everybody?

Upstairs, passengers headed to the two gate piers are confined to a world of low-ceilinged security areas and gate concourses. Prior to security, each area has a single skylight, a futile gesture to open up the space which seems to somehow only add to the gloom, even on the sunny day I passed through.

Meanwhile, the original terminal, which still could be the grandest space in the airport, is completely dominated on one side by a long row of rental car counters.

Their location serves to completely block the terminal's original curbside windows, giving the space basement-like qualities and causing the ceiling to loom alarmingly overhead. Instead of a place flooded with the afternoon sun, we're in a dank cavern cut off the from outside world, especially the sky we're about to travel through.

Might this be a temporary situation due to the construction? Alas, the facilities look pretty permanent. So what should be the terminal's grandest space, a showcase for the airlines serving Syracuse, is instead a grim corridor, retrofitted for the rental car trade. Meanwhile, airlines make do with cramped quarters in either wing, with ticket counters right next to baggage claims.

Upstairs, each side of the terminal leads to its corresponding gate concourse. Judging from a sign in the old main terminal, it looks like the long-term vision is to open up the rear of the main building into one central security point, which makes sense.

But there's no evidence the airlines themselves are moving back into the central area. Instead, it'll continue to occupied by the rental car counters (at least they're convenient) and the airport's one large newsstand/coffee shop, seen below:

Both of these operations back up against the front glass wall of the original terminal, obliterating any sense of retro grandeur that might be possible in the old gal. The store, with its redundant curved ceiling, reminded me of the clamshell ticket counter installed during the latter years of New York's old Pennsylvania Station in a misguided attempt to update it.

Want to get any sense of the old terminal? Look up. The ceiling and the distinctive folded roof, with its little peaks of glass, are still there, though hardly noticeable.

Instead, the space is defined by strange vistas such as this:

Nothing says patriotism like a tiny flag mounted on a temporary wall.

Whatever the plans are to update the terminal's interior, I can't imagine they'd be enough to overcome what I consider the single most depressing feature I've seen in any U.S. airport. It's the incredibly ugly concrete canopy that partially covers the arrivals/departures roadway in front of the terminal. It has the effect of turning a trip to the airport into a ride through a ghetto warehouse district.

Even a sunny day is turned grim!

This is where you alight to begin your journey? This is where you step outside after your flight and are welcomed to the Syracuse area? Through what seems to be the lower level service entrance?

There's so much wrong with this canopy, I hardly know where to begin. Its bulk blocks the main terminal. Its roof blocks the light. It just looks ugly: bare or painted concrete beams streaked with grime, all supporting a ceiling high enough to make people feel puny and low enough to seem oppressive. Presumably intended to shield passengers from the elements, it instead covers them in gloom, along with a steady rain of pigeon poop.

And it probably doesn't do much good shielding anyone from the elements because, incredibly, parts of the supporting structure are roofless! So the result is a network of exposed beams that provide even more roosting spots for pigeons and give the whole thing a desperate, unfinished feel. What happened here? Did the city run out of money?

Arriving at the airport, the open gridwork only serves to remind us of the wonderful sky that the enclosed sections block out -- the sky that you will soon be magically flying through, but you wouldn't know that while making your way under this monstrous concrete canopy.

Strangely, the enclosure roof has tiny skylights. They let almost no light in, but do serve as nice and dry pigeon warming houses. Seen from above from the nearby parking garage, the whole contraption looks especially sad, with piles of pigeon poop visible under the skylights.

Look carefully, and you can see the old terminal's top just peeking over the canopy. What could have been a cool retro-looking building is now just hemmed in by sheer ugliness.

And what about the old main terminal's front? With the rental car concessions and the store now backing up to it, it's become nothing but a blank wall, no different from those dehumanizing chain drug store windows that for some reason are permanently blocked.

So this canopy is a truly inexplicable structure and yes, hands-down the ugliest thing I've ever seen at any U.S. airport. Even if they just got rid of it, I don't know what they could do to restore some dignity to the old terminal, what with its windows blocked and its floor space all clogged with concessions. It's a lost cause.

About the parking garage, just briefly. It's a fright, all crumbling concrete and heaving pavement, but what can you expect in upstate New York's long snowy winters? The terminal's second-level gate areas are connected to walkways directly across the arrivals/departures road to the garage. Unfortunately, both walkways don't match the garage's levels, but arrive between floors in filthy stairwells, a depressing and confusing situation. Besides, what's the point of a walkway on the second level when all baggage and ticketing functions are on the lower level?

Speaking of the walkways, look what I found in one of them:

These modular seats are placed all over the terminal, but why would anyone sit here? Also, what are they supposed to represent? The importance of the centipede to Syracuse? Someone's lower intestine?

How about this nifty arrangement?

And yes, even this hard-luck facility's stairwells are ugly, and potentially dangerous.

This one, a utilitarian box, was actually missing its door handle, and had to be opened by grabbing a sharp-edged hole in the metal housing. It slammed shut behind me with a painfully loud BANG, frightening the many poor pigeons trying to rest inside it.

Wow! Ready to fly to Syracuse? In fairness, however, it's not all bad news. One nice surprise: the terminal and gate areas are configured in such a way as to allow visitors to get closer to an actual aircraft than any airport I know. Check out this view of a JetBlue Embraer 190, taken from a walkway right outside the terminal.

Also, the old terminal contains one stroke of genius amid all the clutter: a full-size set of landing gear right there for you to inspect up close. If an effective terminal helps instill a sense of wonder about flying, then this little gesture of bringing part of an aircraft actually inside the place is a terrific idea. Just the sheer size of the hardware reminds everyone the scale of the machines involved in this experience.

Speaking of machines: Aficionados of vintage video games should check out the Syracuse Airport's game room, where time stopped about 1988:



And yes, it's not completely fair to criticize a terminal that's under construction. But judging from the drawings on display, nothing in the plans will restore the main terminal's grandeur, or give passengers any sense of what Syracuse is or hopes to be. It won't be a place that celebrates the comings and goings of a community. Instead, it's just big mishmash.

So despite the renovations, this airport will likely limp along in really rough shape. Despite the planned improvements, there's not much they can do to make the place a worthy gateway to the area, other than tear it all down and start over.

I have a feeling this won't happen, given what's in place already and how long it's been allowed to languish. So here's a hit list of what they can do to remake the place on a budget:

1. Tear down the awful canopy, restoring the old terminal's front to full view.
2. Inside the terminal, remove the false roofs over the rental car counters and the store to open the space up to the sky.
3. Ditch the white look, or at least put in accent colors. Orange? (for Syracuse University?)
4. Turn the old terminal into a grand foyer for the community.

Is this really the best first impression Syracuse can make? I don't think so, but getting anything done about it won't likely be easy. As an example of how the value of an airport is so poorly understood here, consider this sculpture that sits alongside the main road to the terminal:


It's the first thing people see when driving in or out of the airport, and as such stands as some kind of symbol for the community. Me, I found it so baffling that I pulled over for a closer look.

What I found was a cluster of metal beams stuck on a platform, the whole affair painted silver, though with rust starting to peak through. Check out that base!

There's no explanation, no context, no nothing. It just squats by the outbound roadway, saying loudly to one and all: "Welcome to Syracuse, home to pointless sculpture, confusing design, and deferred maintenance!"

Postscript: Since my visit, I've seen plans of the $50 million terminal rehab project underway. Thankfully, it appears the ugly concrete canopy will be removed! But it looks like the front windows of the main terminal will still be blocked by rental car kiosks and a restaurant. Well, let's hope these get altered so they aren't so instrusive. Removing their ceilings would be a good start.