San Jose’s airport is close and convenient for us, but it sure sucks once you get there. It seems that it’s been continually under construction for several years and everytime you go, the traffic patterns are different. You used to be able to get right onto 101 from the airport. Now you have to sit at several lights and take a couple of poorly-labelled turns.
The other stupid thing is that there’s absolutely nowhere to wait for someone. Today we had to go there to buy a ticket. I had to drive around the airport several times because I didn’t want to deal with the short-term parking where you have to drive in, park, walk to the terminal, walk back, then pay $1 for every fifteen minutes while waiting for the booth person to slowly record your license plate number into some useless database. I wonder how much gas people waste doing the same thing. This is probably the only situation where I WANT to get stuck in traffic. It beats making yet another lap around, avoid jersey barriers, traffic cones and confused drivers.
LAX at least had metered parking so you could just stay a few minutes without ‘checking out” and paying in increments of $1.
On the bright side, it’s really fast to get FROM 101 to the airport with the new ramp, but everything else about getting around there just sucks.
I’m personally convinced that SJC was built by someone who hates air travel.
Yeah, it’s a blessing and a curse. I just hope they finish the damned construction before I die.
How well I remember the poorly labeled turns. Ended up 5 miles south of SJC on our return trip from the visit a year ago last March. All hail the invention of the cell phone!
The best is, when it’s different from when you drop someone off to when you pick them up the next week. “Let’s see last week I needed to be in the left lane of the two labeled 101, oops this week that one actually goes to 87, even though it’s still labeled 101, now I have to cross three lanes of traffic to the right, while they are trying to cross four to the left.”
What’s with buying a ticket at the airport?