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Travel to NYC suffers as rails, roads, runways wrecked

Getting from Boston to New York was nearly impossible on Tuesday, with no planes, trains, or buses running to New York due to extensive damage there from Hurricane Sandy. Bridges were closed, LaGuardia Airport was inundated, and tunnels were flooded, not to mention the city’s submerged subways and streets.

With airports in New York and Newark still closed on Tuesday, the hourly Delta Air Lines and US Airways shuttles from Logan International Airport were canceled, and they will not be flying Wednesday either. JetBlue Airways, Boston’s largest carrier, which is based in New York, was scheduled to resume a few flights out of Logan Tuesday night but will not be fully operational out of Boston until Wednesday.

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It was possible that John F. Kennedy airport would reopen for flights on Wednesday, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Even though Logan remained open during the storm and suffered little damage, about half the flights at Logan were canceled Tuesday, as airlines repositioned planes and rebuilt schedules following Monday’s massive travel disruptions. It will take the airlines several days to put all the pieces back together.

Logan officials expect to operate about 75 percent of the airport’s usual flights on Thursday and be up to 90 percent on Friday.

If not for the conditions at the three New York-area airports, which account for about 12 percent of Logan’s outgoing traffic, Logan would be fully up and running by Friday, said Edward Freni, director of aviation for the Massachusetts Port Authority, which runs Logan.

“The New York impact is pretty dramatic because we have quite a bit of activity at LaGuardia, Kennedy, and Newark,” Freni said.

Nationwide, more than 17,000 flights have been canceled since Saturday because of the storm, according to FlightStats.com. That includes more than 6,000 flights on Tuesday.

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Buses were also unable to get into New York because of closed bridges and had no place to drop people off because the Port Authority bus terminal in Manhattan was closed, and all service to the Big Apple from South Station was scrapped once again on Tuesday. Some bus companies said they still are not going to New York on Wednesday, while others had yet to decide as of late Tuesday.

Amtrak trains were halted along the Northeast Corridor for the second straight day on Tuesday, creating travel woes for more than 750,000 passengers who ride that route between Boston and Washington, D.C., each weekday. Amtrak also canceled its Acela Express service along the Northeast Corridor on Wednesday, as well as its Northeast Regional trains between Newark and Boston, and did not give a date that New York service would be restored because of extensive water damage in the tunnels. There will be trains on Wednesday providing modified service north of Boston and south of Newark, and in Pennsylvania.

About 60 percent of Amtrak passengers who board the train in Boston get off in New York, according to an estimate by the New England Transportation Institute, a nonprofit research group in Vermont.

Kim Karman of Cambridge took the train for a weekend visit to her father on Long Island last Friday, and she is not sure when she will be able to leave. Her Sunday train was canceled, and after realizing that planes, trains, and buses were not leaving the city, and even a rental car was out because of the bridge closures, Karman decided to plug in her laptop and spend a few days working from Long Island.

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“My dad is ecstatic,” said Karman, a 29-year-old audience development manager for New Scientist magazine in Waltham. “This is the most he’s seen me pretty much all year.”


Katie Johnston can be reached at kjohnston@globe.com.
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