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I had no idea that airport train ridership was so low – I suppose that explains their generally elevated prices. Even NYC's JFK AirTrain only carried an average of about 18,000 paid passengers per day in 2014, which seems low to me (though that also translates to about $32 million annual revenue, which might be sustainable.)

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It doesn't help that airtrain only gets you as far as those 2 stops at the end of the A train or Jamaica terminal for the LIRR. Even after your 4.50 ride on airtrain you still have another hour or so into Manhattan. If they had followed the original proposal and built it as a connector JFK -> LGA -> Penn station (or some other central location) I bet ridership would be way up.

Right. I don't know the specifics but I'd guess it was a hard sell to add another rail line in a crowded area when the A/LIRR already went to Penn.

18,000 passengers per day is 6,570,000 passengers annually which is about 12% of the total 54M passengers at JFK. 12% doesn't seem all that low to me.

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