Metro Rail’s Green Line to LAX? It Still Stops Short : Transportation: Don’t hold your breath for a subway to the airport, officials say.

For more than a decade now, leaders in Los Angeles government have been pitching the city’s fledgling Metro Rail subway system as the chance for Angelenos to commute sensibly at last. So it may be: Despite delays and cost over-runs, the system’s Red Line Downtown and the Blue Line to Long Beach are running and tidy, and the Green Line from Norwalk, southeast of Downtown, to El Segundo is scheduled to begin running next May.

But if you’re a traveler hoping that these advances in public transportation will soon simplify your way into and out of Los Angeles International Airport, you may be disappointed. The Green Line won’t directly connect to the airport for at least the next several years, and may never.

Transit officials have been planning the route of the Metro’s Green Line for a decade, and since 1986 have been committed to a path that would lead to the El Segundo area, where LAX lies. The airport, one of the area’s largest employers and the third busiest airport in the nation with nearly 48 million arriving and departing passengers last year, would seem a likely candidate for a subway station.

But after years of often-adversarial discussion with LAX officials about costs, safety and timing, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) instead has settled on a plan that takes the Green Line to within 2.8 miles of the airport’s Tom Bradley International Terminal, and then stops.

The Green Line’s path runs 20 miles in all and includes a southern branch that leads to Marine Avenue in Redondo Beach. A second branch brings the line to its western terminus, known as Aviation Station, at the Glenn Anderson Freeway (better known as Interstate 105 or the Century Freeway) and Aviation Way. That’s 2.9 miles from the Bradley terminal via Century Boulevard (a 10-minute drive) or 2.8 miles (an eight-minute drive) via Sepulveda Boulevard. (Varying dates and figures for the Green Line are in circulation; the numbers and chronology in this column come from MTA spokeswoman Clara Potes-Fellow.)

So why, exactly, won’t the route and the airport connect? In part because MTA and LAX officials couldn’t agree on a way to do it, and in part because public money dried up.

In 1989, the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (which evolved into the MTA in March, 1993) approved preliminary engineering studies on a northern extension of the route to the airport’s Lot C long-term parking area, with cost estimated at $241 million. But airport and Federal Aviation Administration officials warned that the Green Line’s path near runways could distract pilots with its lights, befuddle radar with electromagnetic emissions and stand in the way of low-flying aircraft in emergencies. Another report, MTA officials say, found that construction of an airport metro station would cause major utility conflicts, disrupt air service during construction and potentially disturb two underground “contamination” areas.

In 1992, after placing on hold its preliminary engineering design work for an airport connection, the County Transportation Commission dropped the work altogether, citing budget woes resulting from dwindling tax revenues.

For those travelers and airport workers still interested in using the Green Line to reach the airport, LAX and MTA officials--despite their history of non-cooperation--say they are discussing creation of a new shuttle bus route that would connect Aviation Station to the airport. The El Segundo Employers Assn. is also involved, and a Green Line Circulator Task Force of public and private officials is holding meetings on shuttle possibilities.

If a shuttle is created, a traveler beginning at Los Angeles City Hall has this scenario to contemplate: Take the Red Line. Transfer to the Blue Line. Transfer to the Green Line. Transfer to the airport shuttle. Exit at terminal. Don Camph, executive director of the El Segundo Employers Assn., acknowledges that luggage-dragging travelers may not be particularly excited about a subway-shuttle-airport connection but suggests that “people who are not carrying suitcases,” such as airport workers, may well find it an improvement on their current commute.

In theory, transit officials note, the Metro Rail route might someday be extended toward the airport. But that’s only in theory. Metro officials say there is no money currently earmarked for study of a more direct connection, let alone actual construction of one. Airport officials, meanwhile, say they’re about to begin work on a new master plan that could dramatically reshape transportation and advance plans for a “people-mover” system within the airport complex. “Certainly for at least the next three or four years, all we’re going to have is a shuttle service,” says Jack Graham, facilities planning director for LAX.

With each passing day, the numbers seem to get more discouraging. In 1984, the Green Line’s projected cost was $254.5 million; its estimated daily ridership, 100,000. The most recent revisions push the cost estimate up to $717.8 million, and the projected ridership down to 25,000 daily (because of aerospace industry cutbacks and reductions in the number of feeder lines originally planned for).