$10 charge added to car rentals at airport

AIRPORT DISTRICT — Rental-car customers must now shell out an additional $10 to help fund a proposed $100-million regional transportation center that will incorporate taxis, buses, light-rail and rental cars at Bob Hope Airport.

The customer facility charge, added to each transaction at rental-car outposts servicing the airport, would serve as a primary funding source for the design, construction and operation of a proposed consolidated rental car facility, officials said.

Currently spread out around the airport, car rental companies would be centrally located next to local roadways and the Metrolink-Amtrak train station.

“It is also our belief that this facility will enhance the availability of rental car service and promote competition among the rental car companies, leading to better opportunities for the rental car customer here,” airport spokesman Victor Gill said.

The Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority in September approved the fee for a two-year period to help defray the cost of the proposed Regional Intermodal Transit Center. And despite squabbling from some customers, the plan received early support from transportation stakeholders, officials said.

“Rental car companies have absolutely authorized this in terms of their buy-in,” Gill said.

But even as officials contend that the project would mitigate the airport’s environmental impact on the community by promoting alternative transportation, some customers said the fee amounted to an invasive tax on their travel tabs.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Stephen Zube, 39. “You book a car for $24.99, 30 bucks, and the total comes to much, much more — already.”

The Las Vegas native who considers himself a regular in-state traveler was able to recoup the cost of his rental car through his appliance company until he was laid off in August.

Now, he’s stuck paying the sales tax, state tourism assessment fee, airport concession fee, vehicle license fee and customer facility charge on top of the cost of his economy-class rental.

Laura Bryant, spokeswoman for Enterprise Holdings, noted the difference between taxes unrelated to the rental car industry and the charge in place at Bob Hope Airport.

“Fees charged by airport authorities are mandated by them,” she said. “It’s related to renting a car, so we don’t think it’s fundamentally unfair. Whether it’s too much, that’s up to the community to decide.”

Rental car companies are responsible for collecting the fee from the traveler, reporting the revenue collected and remitting the revenue to the airport operator on a monthly basis, airport officials said.

The new rental car charge, which began Tuesday, is allowed by the state, and many airports have chosen to invoke it, including San Francisco, Oakland, Fresno and Ontario. If the proposed rental car facility fell through, the money would go to improving and relocating the rental car return facility, Gill said.

Still, the idea that car rental customers are a never-ending source of revenue is a misnomer, Bryant said.

Jim Macleay, lead customer service representative at Budget Rent A Car on Hollywood Way in Burbank, expects customers who fly in to have less of a problem with the charge than those who don’t use the airport.

“I would simply go somewhere else,” said Andrew Soderbergh, of Los Angeles, as he waited for a taxi outside the airport Monday. “At some point, it just isn’t worth it.”