Readers React: New terminals at LAX won’t do any good unless traffic miraculously improves

To the editor: Go ahead, expand Los Angeles International Airport all you want, but the odds on making your flight are 50-50 and will only get worse with increasingly heavy traffic on the 405 Freeway, the 105 Freeway and the streets leading to LAX.

Us folks in Orange County don’t even attempt to take a flight from LAX anymore because during the week you have to leave your home between three and four hours before the flight to compensate for the guaranteed bumper-to-bumper traffic that will occur.

LAX has reached its saturation point, so why not expand Long Beach and Ontario instead?

Rob Hamers, Irvine

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To the editor: I flew out of the remodeled Terminal 3 at LAX recently. The gate waiting area had a new bar and open space in the center created by the removal of rows of seats. Nearby, a smoothie bar and a tiny shop selling overpriced chips, drinks and sandwiches had been added.

Travelers (including many families with small children) who once might have waited for flights in actual seats huddled on the floor wherever they could find an open patch of carpeting. And the bar? For an overpriced drink, one got a stool and a way to numb the claustrophobic warehouse feeling.

Meanwhile, the women’s restroom was the same dingy, grossly inadequate facility with the same old long line snaking out the door.

I am not excited about any new terminal at an airport that treats passengers this way.

Jo Perry, Studio City

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