LAX Expansion Plan Rests on What May Be Faulty Premise

A recently unveiled plan to expand Los Angeles International Airport assumes that other airports in the region will meet the city halfway in picking up the increased demand for air service. That may prove to be a precarious assumption.

The LAX expansion calls on these smaller airports to triple their current levels of service. But some face a multitude of political and legal obstacles, while others generate little interest from the airlines because of their remote locations.

Critics of the $12-billion expansion worry that LAX may be setting itself up to absorb far more air traffic than is outlined in the plan.

The city agency that operates LAX has proposed expanding the airport to serve 89 million passengers a year, while demand in the region is expected to grow over the next 20 years to 157 million passengers.

The current facility was designed for a capacity of 40 million passengers a year but is handling 65 million.

“Once they build a new terminal, runways and taxiways, then growth in the airport will be 110 million annual passengers or 120 million,” said El Segundo Mayor Mike Gordon, an ardent opponent of the LAX growth plan.

Airport officials dispute that contention. They say that level of service would require extra runways, which are not part of the plan. The increase in passenger traffic would be accomplished by adding terminals and gates and lengthening runways to accommodate larger jets.

With LAX officials promising to limit traffic to 89 million passengers, the big question for Gordon and others is whether other airports will step up to accept the huge increases.

Regional planners recognize that Long Beach, Burbank and John Wayne airports can do relatively little to help. Those mid-size airports, which share about 16% of the current passenger load, are tucked into densely populated areas and operate under tight municipal or legal restrictions that limit the number of flights they can handle.

John Wayne in Orange County already is operating near its legal limit of 8.4 million passenger trips a year, while Long Beach is limited to 41 flights a day.

Even if airport officials in Burbank are able to end two decades of opposition and build a new terminal, planners envision growth expanding only from today’s 5 million passenger trips to 10 million.

That leaves planners counting heavily on LAX, the former Marine base in El Toro in Orange County, and Ontario International Airport in San Bernardino County.

Ontario offers the most immediate promise. It recently completed a $300-million renovation that would allow it to double its current passenger load of 6.5 million trips a year.

But it struggles to attract passengers and flights. At 10 a.m. on a recent Friday there were only about 25 people in one of the gleaming new concourses--and about the same number of ticket takers and skycaps. The LAX plan envisions Ontario as serving as many as 20 million passengers a year.

El Toro Plan Stalled by Fight

Efforts to develop El Toro into a commercial airport handling 22 million to 28 million passengers a year have met with stiff resistance.

The plan has the support of the Orange County Board of Supervisors and others, but is opposed by environmentalists and some south Orange County residents.

Last March, voters approved an anti-airport measure, but it has been overturned in court. The anti-airport faction plans to go before voters next year with yet another ballot measure.

While community groups from Irvine to El Segundo are battling airport growth, airport boosters in Palmdale and cities in the Inland Empire are aggressively courting airlines--with very little success.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter says Palmdale Airport has the potential to be a major player in the region. She’s not the first city official to think so.

During the 1970s, Los Angeles, which owns the airport, believed so strongly in the airport’s future that it bought 17,000 acres for future airport development.

But plans never materialized and the airport today is closed, fenced off and surrounded by yucca plants and Joshua trees. United Airlines ran commuter jets in and out of Palmdale until a few years ago, when it bailed out because of a lack of customers.

“Basically, carriers haven’t chosen Palmdale because there isn’t a demand. It’s not a viable market,” said United spokesman Alan Wayne.

“L.A. is the action, plain and simple,” he added. “This is where the business is; this is where the passengers are.”

The city is upgrading the Palmdale Airport, giving the terminal fresh paint and new carpeting in an effort to persuade airlines to use it.

Other airports in San Bernardino and Riverside counties are trying to claim pieces of the air cargo business. LAX handles 78% of the region’s air freight, which is expected to triple over the next 15 years.

So far, only the Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville--on the site of the closed George Air Force Base--has been able to attract a commercial airline. Even so, the cargo operation has only one scheduled flight a week.

San Bernardino International Airport, the former Norton Air Force Base, and March Inland Port at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County are struggling to get their first cargo operations going. At some point, the San Bernardino airport would like to handle passenger traffic.

Despite the slow progress, there is great optimism. The Inland Empire is one of the fastest growing regions in Southern California. Local boosters believe it is just a matter of time before LAX reaches its limit on passengers and cargo operations and business begins rippling out to them.

“If L.A. gets capped out at 70, 80 million annual passengers, and El Toro doesn’t open, then there will be 40, 50 million passengers who will have to be serviced by other airports,” said Rick Janisse, a consultant for the company that runs the Victorville airport, which is about 100 miles northeast of LAX. “There is no way LAX can handle all that. Other airports are going to have to be developed.”

Lydia Kennard, head of Los Angeles World Airports, which operates the airport, conceded that LAX is “the only airport substantially and in a meaningful way stepping up to meet regional concerns.”

New Terminal, Gates, Cargo Facility

But she argues that passengers will flock to LAX with or without expansion. To do nothing, she says, invites traffic congestion, noise and air pollution problems without mitigation measures.

Under the $12-billion plan favored by Kennard, runways would be lengthened and reconfigured.

To help mitigate problems that would come with more travelers and flights, a new passenger terminal would be built at the west end of the airport, along with dozens of new gates for arriving and departing airliners. Cargo services would also be shifted and expanded.

One of the traffic improvements would be construction of a multilane boulevard, or “ring road,” that would be built around the airport, an improvement over today’s one-way-in, one-way-out setup.

In addition, the Century Freeway would be extended to the airport, and an entry road would be built off the San Diego Freeway. The plan also calls for extension of the Metro Rail Green Line into the airport.

“There is real concern that, if we do nothing in terms of new taxiways, new runways, we really do jeopardize our ability to make this airport as safe as it can possibly be,” Kennard said.

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Airport Demand

With Southern California’s demand for airline service expected to soar over the next 20 years, local officials have proposed a $12-billion expansion of Los Angeles International Airport. While significantly boosting passenger traffic at LAX, the plan nonetheless would accommodate just slightly more than half the anticipated demand. Other airports in the region will have to pick up the slack, but many obstacles stand in the way of their development.

Sources: USGS, L.A. World Airports