Late last week, Torched’s Alissa Walker broke a story about LAX getting construction underway on a massive roadway expansion. When complete, it will send even more cars into the already gridlocked central “horseshoe” roadway. Widening the roads leading into an unchanged horseshoe will, you guessed it, worsen congestion in the horseshoe.
LAX is my go to example of how bullshit transit planning in America is and why sometimes doing nothing is better than doing the wrong thing.
The horseshoe is HELL, and in 1995 they tried to build transit to the airport but budget cuts and other shenanigans led to the Aviation/Imperial station 2.7 miles away and shuttle buses that also got stuck in the horrible horseshoe traffic. The station was barely used by any airport employees much less any travelers, virtually nothing was accomplished.
Then in 2025 they try again, but bullshit prevails again and they spend $900 million on a station 2.3 miles away, and $3.3 BILLION on a people mover.
I’m sorry there is no reasonable explanation for why the new station was’t built in the horseshoe all along.
Not learning from these mistakes São Paulo’s main airport did the exact same thing.
On the bright side, they’re right on schedule to build a transit station 1.9 miles away in 2055.
For only $157 billion, at this rate it’ll be cheaper to demolish the airport and rebuild it just to put the station where it should have been all along…
That is exactly the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that’s missing today.
how the fuck? My city just built a full elevated metro that also connects directly to the airport for 8 billion CAD (6bil USD). How does the LAX station cost that much?
Are they just terrified of eminent domain or is there a problem with the ground or something? Like the government can just buy the land they need. Yes it’ll piss people off but most people will be much happier.
The brand new $5.5 billion SoFi stadium opened in 2020, and has a brand new $2.2 billion light rail line opened in 2022 (the same line that the LAX people mover is connecting to) that passes 1.6 miles away, but it also doesn’t have a station. My understanding is the stadium owner used their political power to block it because they charge $140 to park per car for NFL games. Recently because of the upcoming Olympics they were going to spend $2 billion on a people mover to the stadium.
Think about that, the original metro line was $2.2 billion, they then spent $3.3 billion fixing the mistake of not actually connecting to the airport, and then they tried to spend another $2 billion fixing the mistake of not connecting to the stadium. $5.3 billion on people movers, trying to correct the shortsighted mistakes from the original build. And if they had done it the obviously right way the first time you could just get off the metro and be at your destination instead of getting off, navigating a connection, waiting for the next people mover…
https://laist.com/news/transportation/la-metro-crenshaw-lax-rail-line-opening-what-to-expect
https://labusinessjournal.com/special-reports/infrastructure-los-angeles-international-airport/
Jesus fucking shit that’s infuriating.
It’s more infuriating because 99% of the time when they make these bad route decisions they will cite cost. But then are ready to spend orders of magnitude more per mile on less convenient and more expensive to operate people movers to fix the route mistake later.
Pennywise, pound foolish doesn’t even begin to describe…
When are they going to finish that line that directly connects to LAX? Give me that and do whatever you want with the road for the car brained, I’ll take transit there. The Flyaway bus is pretty good, but it still has to contend with the traffic getting into the damn place.
The LAX people mover is scheduled to finish 2026. The metro station is already fully complete
When we went to LA with my girlfriend, we took the train (métro ?) as we are used to in Europe. It was really cheap, and covers a large portion of the city. The trip from LAX to downtown was a bit long though, and we had to change train at compton. Only poor people in the wagons, I remember this couple of young danish or swedish beeing scared shitless. In some touristic guides they tell people to avoid metro because it’s dangerous, it looks like its not an exception in the US. Anyway, we were happy with the LA metro and buses…
