Airports work this way because they’re obscenely large. Train stations don't have this issue, especially in NYC where the rail yard is underground. Why would we move the primary intercity train station outside the city when its main advantage over flying is its proximity to the actual city itself?
edit: misread the comment at first but edited since the core argument still stands.
> Airports work this way because they’re obscenely large.
No, US airports work that way because of bizarre bureaucratic funding rules. Sensible airports like Frankfurt or Amsterdam (or even Heathrow) connect directly to the city's ordinary transit network.
And not just the city's ordinary transit network. In Frankfurt (unlike stupid Heathrow) you can get on an intercity train to go a long way from Frankfurt without going into Frankfurt itself and changing at the Hauptbahnhof. It's so fucking sensible it makes me want to cry. Same at CDG and several other European airports (not all though).
Well, it depends. Realistically the vast majority of people arriving at Heathrow are headed for London; if you want to go to Birmingham or Manchester or Paris you fly directly there (and, given how capacity constrained Heathrow already is, planners want to encourage that). Whereas it's quite normal to fly to Frankfurt when you're actually going to Nuremburg or Stuttgart, and so the train connections are set up to support that.
Really the distinction here is "where are the airports?". I think you're saying "if you're headed to a place with an airport, you'd fly there directly, otherwise the train makes sense".
Which is not wrong, but also doesn't quite capture all the complexities of flying, especially inter-continentally.
> I think you're saying "if you're headed to a place with an airport, you'd fly there directly, otherwise the train makes sense".
It's not quite as simple as has an airport or not - Nuremburg and Stuttgart do have airports - but major intercontinental airport or not. Airports are and should be set up with their "catchment area" in mind (bearing in mind what neighbouring airports exist), and their transport connections set up to support that.
Frankfurt is the main intercontinental airport for a region with several mid-sized cities, and its transport links are set up to support that. The London airport system is already the busiest in the world, so transport links are - rightly - focused on spreading people through London rather than long-distance services to other places. (E.g. elsewhere in the thread you mentioned Bath - but Canary Wharf, one of the places Heathrow was recently connected to by Crossrail, employs more people than the entire population of Bath).
I suppose if I'm going somewhere smaller like Cambridge--or probably more to the point somewhere to the west like Bath--it's a bit inconvenient to go into probably Paddington. But, really, in a lot of cities you're transiting to different train stations in any case.
Bath is my destination 95% of the times I fly into Heathrow (my family lives there). The choices are:
1. underground to London Paddington
2. Heathrow Express to London Paddington
3. bus to Reading to get on intercity train to Bath
4. bus/coach from Terminal 3/4 station to Bath
The train to Bristol & Cardiff passes Heathrow just a few miles away, but there is no direct rail connection at all.
It's almost as bad as here in New Mexico, where our only state-level railway, connecting Santa Fe and Belen via Albuquerque, fails to go to the Albuquerque airport, which is the destination/origin for so many Santa Fe travellers.
> The train to Bristol & Cardiff passes Heathrow just a few miles away, but there is no direct rail connection at all.
The train is there, you could also get Crossrail (old Heathrow Connect) to Hayes & Harlington (or Ealing Broadway). Heathrow Express into Paddington and then out again ends up being faster because the fastest trains are the limited-stop expresses, but that's a question of rail network optimization and happens in all sorts of places (e.g. back when I lived in North London the train to Cambridge went through the rail station nearest my house (Harringay), but it was quicker for me to go into King's Cross and out again). Physical distance has very little to do with it. Most people arriving at Heathrow are not going to Bath (a city of less than 100K, compared to London's 9M) and most people going to Bath are not coming from Heathrow; having to change at a hub isn't that unreasonable.
I wasn't really suggesting that the intercity rail system should be designed around my needs as an occasional intercontinental traveller to Bath.
However, the rail system exists. Every train stops at Reading. The trains also go to the capital and largest city in Wales (Cardiff) and Bristol (the 10th largest district by population in the UK). Access to this intercity rail line requires back-tracking into London, something that I don't consider absurd, but do consider a bit silly.
Also, taking population considerations and making them central can lead to strange results in the UK. 1/6th of the population lives in the London metro. While that's important from some perspectives, it can't be the overriding principle for integrated transportation.
I don't see why it shouldn't be? A more direct line to Reading has long been planned (indeed was being worked on until COVID-19 hit), and I imagine if passenger numbers recover then it will eventually get built. But good access to London has taken priority so far, and that seems right too.
Many US airports are at least on newer light rail systems. NYC is probably not uniquely bad but it is worse than a lot of cities in terms of transit accesas from the airports to Manhattan.
edit: misread the comment at first but edited since the core argument still stands.