Expansion of L.A. Airport

Re “Our Ticket for the Global Future,” by Dan Garcia, Commentary, March 26:

Los Angeles residents concerned about the impact of unconstrained growth on community values should worry about the doubling of Los Angeles International Airport traffic proposed by Garcia.

On behalf of the Riordan administration, Garcia is boosting a plan to increase annual passenger numbers from 51 million to 98 million by 2015, and aircraft flights from 690,000 to 1 million. The numbers themselves are suspect, prepared by consultants chosen by the Airport Commission, which Garcia chairs.

For example, the consultants claim to know how many passengers will “want” to fly out of LAX for the next 20 years. Their answer is self-fulfilling: an annual growth rate of 3.5% until 2015.

“LAX cannot be allowed to become gridlocked,” Garcia writes. What about the gridlock in our streets? Already Playa Vista at full build-out is projected to generate 220,000 new car trips daily. With another 50 million LAX passengers, the gridlock will be beyond imagination.

The LAX master planners are studying the option of expanding the airport into Santa Monica Bay, where the big jets already dump huge amounts of pollutants from fuel. Will the master planners pave the bay if communities like Westchester are too “provincial” to support gridlock? Stay tuned.

Garcia trumpets the unfounded claim that Los Angeles will decline as a global crossroads of commerce without a doubling of passengers and near-tripling of cargo. He links any community objections to his agenda with “the protectionist and isolationist trade policies being bandied about on the national scene.”

But you don’t have to be Pat Buchanan to think that great world cities depend on a neighborhood quality of life.

STATE SEN. TOM HAYDEN

D-Santa Monica