I believe I’ve only been in two cell phone lots to date: a nice little one at Westchester County that’s about two minutes away from the terminal and which I have never found overcrowded, and a quite large one at JFK that’s about ten minutes from the terminals. I’ve used that one twice. The first time was totally fine. The second time was a freaking disaster. It’s large, as I said, it was about 100% full, and there’s one access road into it with a traffic light onto a busy service road. When my passengers called to say they were at the baggage claim, suddenly the entire lot tried to empty out at once, and it took — I kid you not — 35 minutes for me to maneuver myself toward that exit. After getting to Jet Blue ten minutes later, all the traffic bottlenecked at the baggage claim and I sat for another ten before my people saw me and made their way to the car…which hadn’t yet gotten closer than 3 or 4 lanes away from the sidewalk. Oh yeah, it was also dark and raining, and that one experience was total HELL.
