Maximum amount of time and cost you would consider traveling to the airport?

[webny99]

I would say that it still might be a quicker journey to take the train as the first leg since you won't have a 2-3 hour layover in between flights. And since trains run regularly there are other options if you miss one vs. missing the first flight and having to wait 4-5 hours for another.

I can't speak for ALB, but for ROC, SYR and BUF, for most domestic destinations a 2-3 hour layover is very much the exception, not the norm, and that's by design. There's a bunch of early morning flights to the hubs so you can typically get to the hub early enough to catch the first flight out to wherever you're going with a short layover of 60-90 minutes or less.

International flights, OTOH, are another story.

[Scott5114]

The parking at LAS runs about $100 for a 7-night stay. A round-trip on Uber is about the same. So if I could take a train there and back for only $6 round-trip, I would jump on that. Of course, we don't have a train. The bus might be an option, but it involves changing buses twice, once in a kind of sketchy area, so that's maybe not advisable. Also, it would take two hours, so it probably wouldn't work for a lot of itineraries.

I don't know anyone in town well enough to depend on them giving me a ride other than my wife, so if she's coming that's not an option.

[kkt]

I live in North Seattle within an easy walk of the light rail, so it's the obvious choice.  Usually about an hour from my door to the terminal.

I took shuttles sometimes, before there was the light rail.  They weren't bad but it would take a very long time for them to come for the return flight.  Sometimes I took the bus, which from downtown to the airport used the freeway express lanes and made no stops between downtown and the airport.  Nevertheless, it was mostly airport workers who took it.

I don't like close connections either.  On a trip last summer, we had to do the sprinting through the airport like OJ used to do in commercials bit.  We did make the flight, though, and at least one other passenger made the some connection because we told the gate attendent that they were less than a minute behind us.

[bugo]

I went 300 miles from Minot to the Fargo airport in North Dakota to catch a plane to Tulsa.

[Rothman]

I went 300 miles from Minot to the Fargo airport in North Dakota to catch a plane to Tulsa.

I once shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.