One of the privileges of my job is I get to travel a lot. In the past year, I have been to Hong Kong, Seoul and Singapore. All three cities have great airports, and nice, clean, comfortable, fast rail transportation from their central cities to their airports.
By comparison, many airport terminals in the US--including two of our biggest international airports, LAX and JFK--are embarrassing, and transportation options to them are limited. Perhaps such things don't matter much to economic performance--it is easy to overstate the wonders of nice infrastructure when the cost is being hidden via subsidies. Nevertheless, there is something about the ability of Asian cities to do infrastructure well that makes me envious.
By comparison, many airport terminals in the US--including two of our biggest international airports, LAX and JFK--are embarrassing, and transportation options to them are limited. Perhaps such things don't matter much to economic performance--it is easy to overstate the wonders of nice infrastructure when the cost is being hidden via subsidies. Nevertheless, there is something about the ability of Asian cities to do infrastructure well that makes me envious.
