Details Sketchy in Hahn’s LAX Modernization Plan

Eight years, $103 million in expenditures and 33 alternatives later, city officials are still without a definitive plan to modernize aging Los Angeles International Airport.

What began in the mid-1990s as an ambitious vision--increase the airport’s capacity to 98 million passengers a year by adding new runways and terminals--is now a significantly scaled-back proposal that would allow little growth, yet still cost billions.

Exactly how much Mayor James K. Hahn’s modernization plan would cost is one of many outstanding questions about his fledgling proposal, which favors security and safety over expansion.

Most of the $103 million spent overall has gone in contracts awarded during Mayor Richard Riordan’s administration for plans that have since been abandoned, according to records obtained by The Times.

Since Hahn took office last year, the city agency that operates LAX has spent about $10 million studying how to improve the world’s third busiest airport. That is $830,000 a month, almost the same pace as the Riordan administration’s spending. Experts say the planning costs will increase as the mayor pursues his vision, conceived on the back of an envelope and first outlined several weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Some details have come into focus. Hahn hasn’t yet formally released his proposal. But in briefings with airport-area residents and business leaders, his staff has described a dramatically different look at the 42-year-old facility.

Most vehicular traffic would disappear from the airport’s horseshoe-shaped roadway, rerouted to a remote check-in facility near the San Diego Freeway. A people mover would take passengers to the airport.

Terminals 1, 2 and 3 would be demolished for a new runway configuration and new terminals would be built where the central parking structures are now.

Over the years, the plan to expand LAX has shifted from construction of two runways into Santa Monica Bay to use of the Hawthorne Municipal Airport for commuter airline traffic and then to Riordan’s vision--addition of a large terminal on the airport’s western end, but no new runways.

Community and business leaders are anxiously awaiting a detailed version of the most recent proposal, known by Hahn’s staff as the “fifth alternative.” The mayor’s office has said repeatedly that the document would be ready soon, but has not elaborated.

Even after a mayor announces a definitive plan, it typically takes at least three years for environmental reports to be completed and approved by federal officials, according to a Federal Aviation Administration study of modernization timelines at major U.S. airports.

The mayor’s office says it can reduce this delay by adding the fifth alternative to Riordan’s master plan and using parts of a 12,000-page environmental report issued with that plan in January 2001.

Because the LAX modernization plan has changed so many times, pre-planning costs here are significantly higher than amounts spent to study expansion at other major airports. Officials spent $26.6 million before beginning construction on the $3-billion Denver International Airport in 1990.

Efforts to improve Seattle-Tacoma International Airport ran about $43.8 million in the planning phase on a $3-billion project--including $30 million in legal fees stemming from a fight over a third runway. Norfolk International Airport in Virginia plans to spend $100 million on both planning and construction costs for a new runway.

But it’s difficult to compare plans to modernize LAX with those for other facilities, experts say, because no other airport improvement project approaches the scope that city officials have proposed for LAX. Complex environmental studies required under California law also add significant costs, said Richard Marchi, senior vice president of technical and environmental affairs for Airports Council International, an airports trade group.

“The Los Angeles undertaking was at a scale that’s much larger than most airports when they do a master plan,” Marchi said. “Most airports talk about adding a terminal or a runway, not about reconfiguring airport boundaries and changing the layout of the facility.”

Hahn’s proposal has graduated from the back of an envelope to a piece of paper stuffed in the pocket of the Airport Commission president, Ted Stein.

Stein has used the rumpled document at meetings recently to brief business and community leaders.

City officials say they decided to hold the briefings using just an outline so they could incorporate the response in the final document.

“What we need here is a consensus to move forward with a multibillion-dollar project,” said Deputy Mayor Matt Middlebrook.

But therein lies a dilemma for the mayor’s office: Many said their first impressions of Hahn’s plan had been clouded by its lack of detail.

The total cost of Hahn’s alternative tops the list of unanswered questions raised by business leaders and airport tenants. Figures floated at the briefings range from $6 billion to $8 billion, which would make LAX modernization among the most expensive public works projects in the U.S.

“The cost and financing of the Fifth Alternative is a huge concern,” American Airlines said in a letter to Deputy Mayor Troy Edwards and Stein, who briefed the company. “We are unaware of any other airport in the country that is considering embarking upon a $6- to $7-billion improvement program in these economically troubled times, much less one that does not add to overall airport capacity.”

Capacity is also a key issue for both business and community leaders. Hahn, following through on a pledge he signed during the mayoral campaign to limit LAX to its existing facilities, has proposed capping the airport at 78 million annual passengers. LAX was used by 61 million passengers last year--about 65% more than it was built to serve.

How Hahn will limit growth at the airport remains an open question. The airlines control flight schedules at the nation’s 429 commercial airports, and they have repeatedly said they favor LAX over regional airports.

Costs and capacity aside, Hahn’s proposal, as outlined at the dozen or so briefings held so far, would dramatically alter the airport’s geography. Some key elements:

* A new terminal at Manchester Square, a 143-acre area just north and east of the airport--bordered by Arbor Vitae Street on the north, La Cienega Boulevard on the east, Aviation Boulevard on the west and just shy of Century Boulevard on the south--that would house passenger drop-off and arrival areas. The facility would include at least 9,000 parking spaces.

* A people mover that would take passengers on a four-minute ride from Manchester Square to LAX. This system would also connect the Green Line, which ends about a mile from LAX, with Manchester Square.

* A centerline taxiway between the two parallel runways on the north side of the airfield. Space for the taxiway would be opened up by moving the runways closer to the terminals--a change that would necessitate demolishing Terminals 1, 2 and 3.

* A terminal complex in the middle of the airport’s horseshoe-shaped roadway. The plan calls for knocking down the existing parking structures and replacing them with facilities where passengers would go through security screening.

* A concourse on the western side of the airfield behind the Tom Bradley International Terminal with gates that would help make up for those lost with the demolition of the three terminals on the airport’s north side.

* A taxiway on the eastern side of the airfield near Sepulveda Boulevard that would connect the north and south sides of the airfield and require the demolition of Terminal 8 and the airport agency’s administrative building.

The plan has received mixed reactions. Residents are pleased that Hahn has stood by a promise to eliminate several controversial elements from Riordan’s plan, such as a large terminal on the western edge of the airport and a road that would have encircled the 3,500-acre facility.

“Looking at the plan I felt like, ‘My gosh, they really did listen,’ ” said Gwen Vuchsas, a Playa del Rey resident who attended a briefing earlier this month. “I felt encouraged.”

Some business leaders expressed concern that the plan might carry vehicles away from retail centers in communities around LAX that rely on airport traffic to make money.

A Westchester businessman, Howard Drollinger, said transferring traffic from major arteries like Sepulveda and Lincoln boulevards to Manchester Square might harm local stores. Drollinger plans to poll 400 tenants that his property management company represents in the area to see how a reduction in traffic might affect their books.

Among the issues left to be resolved before Hahn completes his plan are how much security activity would be at Manchester Square, where passengers would be dropped off or park their cars. Would passengers go through screening there? Would they have to take their bags from this facility to the airport, via the people mover? Several who attended briefings said such a requirement would greatly inconvenience travelers.

“That alternative seems to me to be absolutely unacceptable,” said Bruce Karatz, chief executive of the Los Angeles-based builder KB Home. “I can’t imagine an elderly couple being dropped off and having to be in charge of their bags on a moving sidewalk.”

At several briefings, Stein and Edwards discussed the possibility of an underground tunnel to transport baggage to and from Manchester Square. But such systems--like one at Denver International Airport--are expensive and glitch-prone, leading American Airlines and Karatz to question whether the city can afford to include one in the plan.

Others expressed doubts about the wisdom of moving passengers from the nine terminals in LAX’s central terminal area to a remote facility that would concentrate travelers in one place.

“Any such plan must first ensure that we do not further concentrate passengers as a terrorist target,” wrote Lee Harrington, chief executive of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., in an op-ed article in late May.

Also uncertain is what would be done to address near misses between aircraft on the south side of the airfield--where about 80% of the near-collisions documented at LAX occur.

To address this issue, officials have discussed moving the two parallel runways on the south side farther apart to give planes more room to maneuver. But to do so, the city agency would need to move the far left runway 50 feet closer to El Segundo.

Community leaders don’t like this idea, saying that, to improve safety on the airfield’s south side, air traffic controllers should have planes taxi to the end of the outboard runway and then cross over the inboard runway on their way to the terminals.

But squabbles over details aside, many who firmly opposed airport expansion over the years are pleased with Hahn’s approach to modernization--so far.

“The fact that they’re showing the plan to stakeholders is a positive attempt to try to reach out to the communities,” said Mike Gordon, the mayor of El Segundo, who led a drive to kill Riordan’s master plan. “But in the end, it will still come down to what the plan is and are they going to limit the airport’s growth.”