Don’t Leave Your Ticket on the Train to Newark’s Airtrain

Sometimes it becomes a real toss-up whether to park at the airport or try another way. I’m currently traveling in remote Sarawak, Malaysia, on assignment for GoNOMAD.com. Because this trip was longer, 12 days, versus my usual press trip length of seven days, I decided to do something different.

I drove down to my parents house, in Princeton, NJ, passing right by Newark Airport, where my flight departed at 10 pm that night. I arranged to rendezvous with my parents, who met me at the New Jersey Transit train station in Princeton Junction. My friend Sony decided that it was too much of a hassle to take the train. So she parked the car in the airport’s Economy parking lot for $15 per day. Her loss, since she could have booked on APR and saved about $3 per day.

The station was bustling, bursting at the seams with commuters returning from their jobs in New York or Philly, and so it was a mob scene. I met them quite a bit away from the departure area for Newark-airport bound trains.

I boarded the train and did what most people do, tucked the ticket into the seat back, so the conductor could punch it.

When the train reached Newark Airport’s Airtrain station, they asked me, or I should say, demanded that I use my NJ Transit ticket to get through the gate to the Airtrain. I didn’t have it, and I had paid in cash.

SO a caveat to anyone who is planning on using the Airtrain: keep that ticket or like me you’ll have to fork over $5.50 to get to the monorail.