To applause from a City Hall audience, the Los Angeles City
Council on Wednesday unanimously approved
up to $4.9 billion to design, build, operate and maintain an elevated train
that will whisk passengers in and out of LAX's central terminal area and carry
them to a car rental facility, a ground transportation hub and Metro station on
the Crenshaw Line. The sleek people mover is a major part of L.A.'s efforts to
improve transportation in traffic-choked Southern California before the 2028
Summer Olympics. The project will break ground this year, and service is
expected to begin in March 2023.
Travelers
leaving Los Angeles International Airport by car, van, bus, shuttle or taxi
have no choice but to wait at the chaotic curbside, often for more than half an
hour, as drivers fight through crawling lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic.
Los
Angeles World Airports' progress toward a transportation system that provides
an alternative to driving comes years — in some cases, decades — after other
major world airports. As flight volumes grew and traffic worsened in Southern
California, travelers learned that getting in and out of LAX could be chaotic,
miserable and unpredictable. Currently, passengers and airport employees who
take transit to the airport must disembark from the Metro Green Line at the
Aviation/LAX station and transfer to shuttle buses.
Original
plans for the Green Line called for a direct rail connection to LAX. But in the
early 1980s, people mover technology was not widely available — at least
outside of Disneyland — and officials could not decide how to build the
station inside the horseshoe terminal area. The extension was ultimately killed
when the price tag on the 20-mile Norwalk-to-Redondo Beach line tripled.
Still,
construction crews built a rail line stub branching off the Green Line,
pointing hopefully toward the airport. Those tracks have now been connected to
the Crenshaw Line, the 8.5-mile light-rail route slated to begin service late
next year.
A
$200 million-dollar Metro station at 96th Street and Aviation Boulevard will
serve as a transfer point to the people mover. Reaching LAX's terminals from
the rail station is expected take less than 10 minutes, airport officials said.
The people mover trains will be driverless and will run on smaller tracks than
a light-rail vehicle. Trains will run every two minutes, 24 hours a day, and
will be able to carry about 10,000 people per hour. The train will make three
stops in the center of LAX's arrivals and departures areas, where passengers
will be able to connect to nearby terminals on moving walkways.
East
of the airport, the people mover will connect to a ground transportation hub
where travelers can wait to be picked up by a friend or a ride-share driver, or
board shuttle buses to nearby hotels or parking lots — improvements that
officials say should significantly reduce traffic near the terminals. The
people mover's final stop, near the 405 Freeway, will be a consolidated car
rental facility. The massive development will eliminate the need for the
lumbering rental car shuttles that account for 1 in 5 curbside airport
boardings.