The ambassadors

By E.G. | MINNEAPOLIS

ON arriving in Minneapolis this morning, I decided to use the city's light rail system to get from the airport to the convention centre. It was much more pleasant than waiting around for a hotel shuttle: predictable, efficient, and—thanks to a stranger who gave me an unused ticket—free. (It would otherwise have cost a mere $2.25.)

The chief advantages of rail links to airports are self-evident. They facilitate travel and reduce traffic congestion, which is why Delhi's high-speed airport link, which opened in February, was so celebrated. They may also give airports an edge in areas where travellers have options. A connection to the metro system in Washington, DC is one of the advantages Reagan National has over Dulles. In sprawling cities, good links between the airport and the city centre might spur travellers to eschew the rental car, nudging them to spend time downtown.

And it strikes me that airport links may also have a significant positive externality for American cities struggling to make the case for their own light rail systems—which is to say, a lot of them. This is because they are, by design, highly accessible to travellers. They're likely to be a traveller's first experience of a city's public-transport system. And so a pleasant airport link can be an effective ambassador for light rail systems in general. This is especially true in cities like Minneapolis, where the corralling of visitors into close contact with locals gives the former a quick sense of the virtues of the latter. After one stranger had given me a free ticket, another carried my bag, and a whole cluster held the door so I could disembark after a throng of baseball fans had surged on board. All part of the American axis of niceness: Minnesotans, Mormons and Muppets.