Letters: Mass transit that L.A. can use

Re “Transit, meet LAX. Maybe.,” Editorial, Oct. 13

What is so difficult about connecting rail transit to the Los Angeles International Airport?

Officials with Metro and Los Angeles World Airports should go to New York and experience JFK airport’s AirTrain — and then copy it here. They should connect the terminals, parking lots, the 96th Street bus terminal and the Green Line Aviation stop with a rail system like New York’s (or Newark’s) and be done with it.

They should make the ride into downtown less convoluted by building a connector between the Green Line and the Blue Line — which already intersect — and run airport express trains to LAX. How nice would that be?

Perhaps the underlying problem is that transit officials don’t actually rely on transit. Give them all Metro passes for a month and let them navigate L.A. without their cars. Then we might see some action.

Stephen Jackson

Los Angeles

It is not ineptitude that kept light rail out of LAX. The influence of special interests on the politicians who made the decisions relegated LAX to second-class status and travelers to pawns to be exploited.

Ineptitude? No. Corruption? Maybe.

Coincidentally, I just returned from Seattle. The train station at its airport is connected to the parking structure. You walk out of the terminal and on to the platform. It costs $2.75 for the 30-minute ride to downtown.

It’s much the same in Portland. In fact, vendors at that city’s airport are required to charge the same prices as their off-airport locations. How refreshingly honest — quite the contrast with LAX.

Thomas Keiser

Pasadena

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