World's Best Airports for Transit: 10 Places With Fast, Frequent Train Service Into the City

In one of this channel's first videos, we counted down the ten airports in North America with the best transit connections. In this new video, we tackle the same question but expand it to the entire globe: what are the airports, worldwide, that provide the best transit service into their central city?

Our journey today will include stops in some of the world's best cities for rail transit, including Tokyo, London, Seoul, Shanghai, Madrid, Singapore, and many others. The focus will be on metro systems, but we'll also spend some time looking at regional rail systems, express and all-stop airport-specific services, monorails, and even maglevs.

Other CityNerd videos referenced in this video:

Other Resources:

Photo/Video Credits:
- Madrid video for title Video by Alberto Amortegui from Pixabay
- Bangkok Metro Video by Olivier Polome-Pengthong from Pixabay
- Changi Airport Video by Alex Pandian from Pixabay

Music:
CityNerd background: Caipirinha in Hawaii by Carmen María and Edu Espinal (YouTube music library)

Twitter: @nerd4cities
Instagram: @nerd4cities

[johanna]

Amsterdam was definitely an eye-opener for me, who's from an area of CA with horrible public transit (we only have buses, and they just get stuck in traffic with all the cars). I showed up at Schipol, walked out of the terminal, down the stairs to the station. Hopped on a train. Showed up at Amsterdam Central, walked out and hopped on a free ferry and then walked five minutes to my hostel. It was amazing.

[ThurstonCyclist]

In my only trip to Korea and Japan, I flew into and out of Incheon, Gimpo, Narita and Haneda, and the connections for Haneda and Gimpo were great. If you are flying in to Haneda for the first time, I recommend the monorail purely for the view.

[fresagrus]

Copenhagen Airport is even better than it seems by the train frequency. You also have an express bus, and to me the advantage is that by having three different transport modes you are covered against accidents and failures. The connections to Malmö in Sweden are actually quite often, even though failures and traffic interruptions are common. It is possible to take direct trains to other danish cities. There is frequent 24 hour service both towards Denmark and Sweden. Furthermore, the airport is not in the middle of nowhere and the station is not even 200m away from the arrivals exit. All of this by being functional, small and cheap compared to the ultra large cities and gulf countries with infinite money mentioned in this video

[tekuaniaakab]

You should still rank the public parks in North America. It’s interesting to see how size doesn’t always matter and how accessibility can be as important as with airports

[marktaylor]

Stick with it dude, your content is good and your dry tone is amusing so it won't be long until you're at 1m subs!

[nicolasblume]

Frankfurt is one of the best in Europe! There are commuter trains regional express trains - and what sets it apart: An incredible number of highspeed trains! It's at the Start of the Cologne - Frankfurt highspeed line, the busiest highspeed line in Germany

[jmchristoph]

I was really impressed with Zurich the last time I traveled internationally. From the airport train station, you've got four S-Bahn lines which cover most of the metro area & a few other nearby cities, plus InterRegio, InterCity, & high-speed trains going basically everywhere in Switzerland & quite a few places beyond. And on top of that you've got two ZVV tram lines: the 10 which goes to the city center & the 12 which goes to the northeastern suburbs, w/ several good onward rail connections at both.

[scpatlnow]

How did LAX not get dishonorable mention??? It once took me over an hour in an Uber to CLEAR the airport loop from Terminal 2 to the exit

[vigneshanand]

From Chennai here, apart from the metro, the airport also has a connection to the city's suburban(regional) rail network. Which also connects to Chennai Central with 9 trains per hour giving us a total of 27 which I think puts us at second place. And the fare on the suburban network is just 10 rs(0.13 USD)

[juliaschultz]

I just visted Seoul and took trains from Incheon to Seoul Station and from Seoul Station to Gimpo on separate occasions. It was seamless, effortless, clean, quiet, I cannot praise enough.

[eriklakeland]

Video idea: top 10 (under construction) transit projects you’re the most excited about. Would be interesting to hear your thoughts and the factors you considered. A U.S. list and a worldwide list would be nice.

The circular Line 15 around Paris would be a top contender on my list. The direct connections between dense Parisian suburbs, massive network effects, high off peak frequency and very high average speed of Line 15 are incredibly impressive.

Circumferential and crosstown transit was already an important need in the USA (Chicago, Boston, NYC), but the post-COVID deemphasis of 9-5 CBD commuter districts makes this issue even more important. It’s so frustrating that such polycentric urban areas like NYC and Boston have rail systems completely geared towards 9-5 CBD office commuters.

[internationality.]

I've personally had a great experience with the Hong Kong Airport Express, with fast, frequent and comfortable service to HKIA (in the MTR network). Still takes 25ish minutes due to the distance from the city, but I think it's worth a mention.

[MrMartinSchou]

Copenhagen Airport, Kastrup, is also very well connected.

It has metro heading into and arriving from Copenhagen city central every 4 minutes at rush hour (7-9 AM and 2-6 PM), every six minutes outside of rush hour on weekdays and on weekends, and every 15 minutes weekend nights and 20 minutes on weekday nights.

In addition to this is has trains coming in three times an hour on weekdays and once an hour on weekends. These go to either Copenhagen or Malmö.

Peak hours we're talking 30 metro departures an hour and six train arrivals and departures. The train ones are tricky, because they leave to two very different destinations rather than having Copenhagen or airport as the obvious destination.

On top of this there are three bus lines that all have stops at the airport, one of them goes to the city centre and it has 9 departures and 9 arrivals an hour in rush hours.

All told I'm counting 54 departures and arrivals an hour at peak hours. You may argue that it should only count as 18 metro and 3 trains an hour, plus another 9 busses for 27 transit departures an hour.

Trip to Malmö is €12.25 or US$13.50.
Trip to the centre of Copenhagen (Nørreport Station) is 17 minutes and costs €4.84 or $5.33 (cheaper with commuter tickets).

And on top of this it has excellent access for people on bicycles. Maybe not the most likely mode of travel for a commuter, but they have free bicycle parking at both terminals.

It's not a massive airport, as Denmark simply isn't that large (~6 million inhabitants), but it still served 30 million passengers in 2019.

Not sure it's enough to put it in the top 10 (even though it arguably has more transit departures an hour than many others in the list), but it's not exactly terrible.

[ThepoLarbear-leyz]

Here could be another idea for a video. Top 10 cities with transit access to national parks. (Or perhaps the top 10 best national parks for transit?)

Getting back to the wilderness while living the urban dream.

[krmendozaa]

As someone in Vegas, I laugh at how true it is for us to be on the dishonorable list. I WISH we had a train or even an expanded monorail beyond just the Strip but alas, that is highly unlikely (at least in the next few years).

I didn’t fly into Gimpo when I last visited Seoul but wow, their public transit is so great. I appreciated that they even had conveyor belts for suitcases when you were transferring trains or heading down to the airport line. Loved this list. Thanks for sharing!

[ChristopherPronger]

I think Dubai should lose some points from the rest of the infrastructure being so horrific. But I guess this was just about connecting an airport to a city center and nothing beyond that.

[toshitt]

To get to Haneda airport from Tokyo Station, Keikyu is the cheaper option and the Tokyo Monorail is the faster one. They both require changing trains, but both are with major lines with very frequent trains, so that’s a wash.

They are planning a direct line between Tokyo Station and Haneda by 2029.

[Mauri-jbup]

London is amazing, particularly now the entire Crossrail will open. But the problem with London Heathrow is that all lines operate in direction of London. Those coming from other British cities still have to change the train at Paddington or some other station on the way. Modern-day international airports serve larger national and international regions. Therefore, Amsterdam Schiphol with Thalys and Eurostar links to France, Belgium, and the UK should be much higher if not the first. Also, Frankfurt and Paris CdG have bullet train stations, which link the airport with other large cities around. Even many major Asian airports lack long-distance train stations, not to mention HSR terminals.

[teunsmits]

Your Schiphol assesment has me a little confused, though to be fair it is a little bit of a confusing station as far as airport rail links go.

The Thalys you mention isn't actually /that/ useful, as they don't allow boarding at Schiphol for Amsterdam bound trains.
How exactly you arrived at 10 InterCity trains and 6 Sprinter trains I do not know (I assume you must've just looked at the wrong destinations, they don't really do a great job at communicating which trains go via Amsterdam Centraal or Amsterdam Zuid), the number should however probably be 15 (today) to 19 (from April 14th; covid related reduction) InterCity trains (including InterCity Direct) and 8-10 Sprinters (depending wether or not you want to count the ones that continue to Zaandam from Amsterdam Sloterdijk and require a transfer there).

That gives me *25* trains and hour into the city today and *29* from April 14th (I am aware of your covid disclaimer).
That alone would elevate it to 4th (or 2nd) in the list, not to mention the fact that in the case of Schiphol I think there is a strong case to be made that Rotterdam Centraal with 5 (3 today) trains every hour that take only 26 minutes and Den Haag Centraal/Laan van NOI with 6 (4 today) trains every hour that take 30/28 minutes could potentially be counted among central city destinations as well. I think therefore a number as high as *32* (currently) or even *40* (again from April 14th) is not crazy to argue.

In short my pet airport got snubbed (I think the level of integration into the rail network is very impressive).

[jfwfreo]

The big difference between Changi and JFK is that at JFK you have to pay a big surcharge to use Airtrain but the Changi stop is just another stop on the network with no surcharge.