Advocates said that it would improve access to the airport from the subway and LIRR, alleviate traffic congestion, and reduce air pollution in and around East Elmhurst.

[11] The Mets-Willets Point subway stop would have been rebuilt, and $50 million had been allocated toward planning and designing this work in the 2015–2019 MTA Capital Program.

[16] The rail line was to begin in Midtown Manhattan, crossing the East River via the Queensboro Bridge's lower-level outer roadways, which had been formerly used by trolley cars.

[23] Giuliani wanted the Port Authority to study the possibility of extending the BMT Astoria Line to LaGuardia Airport, among other things.

[25] In 2003, $645 million was budgeted to extend the Astoria Line to the airport, but the extension was never built due to community opposition in Queens.

[26][27] On January 20, 2015, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a plan to build a people mover similar to AirTrain JFK.

A pair of contracts, totaling $7.5 million, were awarded for preliminary engineering work at the two Willets Point stations and expected to be completed in 2017.

New York Commissioner Kenneth Lipper tried to have the plan amended with all funding for the AirTrain removed, citing concerns that the project would leave the agency in financial difficulty.

[39][11] The Port Authority subsequently began environmental studies for three possible routings of the AirTrain to Willets Point, as well as the no-build alternative.

[47] In March 2021, the FAA released their final EIS on the project; at the time, work was supposed to commence in June 2021 and the AirTrain LGA would be opened by 2026.

[56] Hochul said in October 2021 that she had directed the PANYNJ to consider alternatives,[57][58] and the authority presented 14 options in March 2022, including extending the BMT Astoria Line to provide service to the airport.

[59][60] Meanwhile, Hochul announced that, starting on May 1, 2022, the Q70 bus would no longer charge fares as a temporary measure while the New York state government studied alternatives to the AirTrain plan.

[68][35] According to one critic, even with a capacity increase, the route was not worth traveling due to its distance from most of the rest of the city, as "transit travel times from LaGuardia to destinations throughout New York City—from Grand Central in Midtown Manhattan to Borough Hall in downtown Brooklyn to Jamaica in central Queens to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx—would be longer for passengers using the AirTrain than for passengers using existing transit services already offered by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

"[69] The Village Voice called the project an "unmitigated disaster" for its convoluted, unwieldy route, and asked, "Why would [Cuomo] build [the AirTrain's] terminal at Willets Point, which is even further from the city than the airport itself?

"[70] One alternative suggestion involved the previously rejected proposal to extend the Astoria Line to LaGuardia Airport rather than building the AirTrain to Willets Point.

[39] Another critic called the $2.05 billion estimated construction cost "exorbitant" and proposed dedicated busways as a more direct and cost-effective solution.

[72][73] Hiram Monserrate, the area's Democratic District Leader, also objected that the FAA's approval had bypassed a Uniform Land Use Review Procedure analysis, as would have been mandated for other large projects.

In 2017, the Newsday editorial board wrote a piece in support of the AirTrain LaGuardia project, saying that it would increase mass transit patronage to the airport.

[75] Rick Cotton, executive of the Port Authority, said in an opinion article in the New York Daily News: "Let's stop talking about the red herring of 'doubling back' and focus on choosing the best route based on real issues, including the impact on neighborhoods, disruptions to highways, rail and utilities, and passenger experience, as well as cost.

"[76] In 2020, a group of former New York City transportation commissioners wrote an op-ed in the Daily News in which they strongly supported the final AirTrain LaGuardia proposal.