LOS ANGELES | LAX Modernization Plan

[Quixote]

I think jg6544 is talking about LAX being a logistical nightmare, and he's right about that. The traffic in, out, and especially through the CTA is very "second world" for a major international airport serving as the gateway to the Pacific Rim. I don't know if LAWA completely abandoned this idea, but the original LAX Master Plan (circa 2004-2005) called for shutting down the entire CTA and re-routing all traffic to a centralized drop-off/pick-up zone. From there, departing passengers would then take people movers into the CTA and disperse to their terminals. I think that would alleviate the legendary traffic problem.

[atlantaguy]

^That would be ideal, Westsidelife! But, where is the money for something of that scope?

There also needs to be a rail connection, but from what I gather that's already in the works...

Basically, the footprint is there to make some very logical improvements. I think it comes down to a question of funding and overriding the NIMBY's that actually believe they can make LAX simply cease to exist.

[Rail Claimore]

Originally Posted by Westsidelife

I think jg6544 is talking about LAX being a logistical nightmare, and he's right about that. The traffic in, out, and especially through the CTA is very "second world" for a major international airport serving as the gateway to the Pacific Rim. I don't know if LAWA completely abandoned this idea, but the original LAX Master Plan (circa 2004-2005) called for shutting down the entire CTA and re-routing all traffic to a centralized drop-off/pick-up zone. From there, departing passengers would then take people movers into the CTA and disperse to their terminals. I think that would alleviate the legendary traffic problem.

The traffic problem in the CTA is disproportionately on the south side of the airport because all three big US carriers, AA, DL, and UA operate from there. If only one of those three would agree to rebuild and move into T2 and/or T3, that issue would be much-alleviated.

[jg6544]

Originally Posted by Rail Claimore

DTW is the "newest" airport in the US: having all its terminals totally rebuilt in the past 10 years. McNamara Terminal (Delta's second largest hub) is the only terminal that is, in terms of looks, size, scale, and quality, straight out of Asia. The new TBIT will be in that same category once it's fully opened and operational, but the rest of the terminals and airfield work will be a gradual process.

LAX could improve in a lot of areas right now, but for an airport with an airfield that was smaller than ATL pre-runway 10/28 (ATL's 4-parallel runway layout was based off LAX) sering a metro area of 18 million, it makes remarkably high and efficient use of what it has. There are no large empty areas of the airport at any given time, something I can only say about it and ATL. And there are no large areas of open land to build a new DFW or DEN-sized airport anywhere in Greater Los Angeles that would be convenient to a majority of residents in the region and that are located on the E-W flight paths into the area. Anyone who flies into LAX sees the necessity of this by looking out the right windows of the aircraft. At 10,000 ft over the Inland Empire, you're basically just 10 miles south of the San Gabriel Mountains and are level with them in elevation.

The ONLY thing besides the current improvements and master plan for LAX that would provide significant congestion relief and additional capacity for air travel in Southern California would be to move San Diego International Airport to Miramar. There's room there for an airport at least the size of O'Hare to serve not only San Diego, but OC and the southern half of the Inland Empire as well. But that won't happen until another BRAC round decides on closing the facility and/or moving its operations elsewhere. San Diego will do this eventually, but it will be at least another generation before it happens.



JFK is the only New York area airport that is making any significant improvements in any area, and most of it is thanks to Delta. United couldn't give two sh*ts bout EWR, they'll just milk it for all its worth until it's absolutely necessary to rebuild the whole thing from scratch. United is giving more attention to IAH (a hub they threatened to cut a huge amount of service from if Houston opened up HOU to international flights for WN) right now, of all its hubs: that says a lot more about EWR than anything else.

Interesting points. With regard to the new Bradley terminal, fat lot of good that's going to do people who aren't flying overseas.

I think L. A. should have recognized the limitations of LAX about thirty years ago and started doing something about an international airport that wasn't bound in by those limitations (footprint too small; too close to residential areas; impossible ground access; terminals too spread out with no practical ways of getting from one to another other than walking or taking a cab). DIA didn't spring into being overnight. It was, what, twenty years in planning and it still took them a few years after it opened to get all the kinks out. It's miles from downtown Denver (although they are building some kind of rail connection that goes into downtown and plugs into Denver's light rail system), but the trade-off is that there's room to enlarge it and there's a built-in buffer around the field to keep after-the-fact NIMBYs from moving next door and then griping because there's an airport just down the street. L. A. should have engaged in that kind of planning. Instead, they kept trying to patch up LAX and all the decades of partial "fixes" are taking their toll.

I scrolled back through this entire thread today and was struck by many things. First, the initial timetable for the new Bradley terminal was wildly optimistic. This is California. Nothing gets built in 2-3 years. Part of the damned thing is going to open this summer, it looks like.

Second, the Bradley terminal, whenever it's finally completed, will do nothing about the shabby, run-down, unpleasant domestic terminals; the problems all travelers face with a huge airport that has NO internal transportation system (next time I have to fly out of or into LAX, I'm going to use my arthritic knee as an excuse to have them drive me around in one of those little carts), and the fact that the street access was clogged to capacity years ago and the airport still has no connection of any kind to mass transit (assuming anyone could use it). The "plan" looks to me like nibbling around the edges of the real problems with LAX while doing nothing whatsoever about building an alternative.

And then there's the problem of excess capacity at Long Beach, Burbank, and Ontario because either the neighborhoods around those airports whine about routing more flights through those airports or because the airlines insist on routing everything into LAX. As you said, it's all about hubs and LAX, for better or worse (I think worse) is the hub we're stuck with.

Finally, I am not carrying a brief for DIA. SFO is a hell of a lot better than LAX too, but I don't live in San Francisco. Maybe if we ever get real high-speed rail build, they'll build a stop at SFO and I can take the train up there whenever I have to fly.

[jg6544]

Originally Posted by atlantaguy

Sorry jg6544, we'll have to just agree to disagree then.

I find the three combined NYC area airports to be a massive slap in the face to our largest metro, for both residents and visitors.

Fortunately, I haven't been to New York in nearly 20 years and feel no need to go anytime in the foreseeable future. But even 20 years ago, those three airports were awful.

[Rail Claimore]

Originally Posted by jg6544

Interesting points. With regard to the new Bradley terminal, fat lot of good that's going to do people who aren't flying overseas.

I think L. A. should have recognized the limitations of LAX about thirty years ago and started doing something about an international airport that wasn't bound in by those limitations (footprint too small; too close to residential areas; impossible ground access; terminals too spread out with no practical ways of getting from one to another other than walking or taking a cab). DIA didn't spring into being overnight. It was, what, twenty years in planning and it still took them a few years after it opened to get all the kinks out. It's miles from downtown Denver (although they are building some kind of rail connection that goes into downtown and plugs into Denver's light rail system), but the trade-off is that there's room to enlarge it and there's a built-in buffer around the field to keep after-the-fact NIMBYs from moving next door and then griping because there's an airport just down the street. L. A. should have engaged in that kind of planning. Instead, they kept trying to patch up LAX and all the decades of partial "fixes" are taking their toll.

I scrolled back through this entire thread today and was struck by many things. First, the initial timetable for the new Bradley terminal was wildly optimistic. This is California. Nothing gets built in 2-3 years. Part of the damned thing is going to open this summer, it looks like.

Second, the Bradley terminal, whenever it's finally completed, will do nothing about the shabby, run-down, unpleasant domestic terminals; the problems all travelers face with a huge airport that has NO internal transportation system (next time I have to fly out of or into LAX, I'm going to use my arthritic knee as an excuse to have them drive me around in one of those little carts), and the fact that the street access was clogged to capacity years ago and the airport still has no connection of any kind to mass transit (assuming anyone could use it). The "plan" looks to me like nibbling around the edges of the real problems with LAX while doing nothing whatsoever about building an alternative.

And then there's the problem of excess capacity at Long Beach, Burbank, and Ontario because either the neighborhoods around those airports whine about routing more flights through those airports or because the airlines insist on routing everything into LAX. As you said, it's all about hubs and LAX, for better or worse (I think worse) is the hub we're stuck with.

Finally, I am not carrying a brief for DIA. SFO is a hell of a lot better than LAX too, but I don't live in San Francisco. Maybe if we ever get real high-speed rail build, they'll build a stop at SFO and I can take the train up there whenever I have to fly.

I'm not sure how long you've been flying, but I flew frequently across the Pacific to Japan and South Korea in the 1980's and early 1990's before Russian Air Space was opened up. LAX had just done a major expansion in the early 80's with the current Bradley Terminal and T2, plus separating arrival and departure roadways for cars. No one back then foresaw the types of planes we'd have that could fly to East Asia nonstop from the Eastern US and the increase in transpacific traffic from those hubs making daily flights to Tokyo and Seoul viable from airports like ORD and ATL. Everyone and everything in those days was routed through LAX if you didn't want to stop in ANC or fork over obscene amounts of money to fly on limited one-stops from back East.

On your point about SFO, from a passenger perspective, it's only marginally better than LAX because it has more terminal space per passenger. But it suffers from the same problems for connecting passengers as LAX does if you're flying any airline but United: you have to re-clear security.

[jg6544]

Originally Posted by Rail Claimore

The traffic problem in the CTA is disproportionately on the south side of the airport because all three big US carriers, AA, DL, and UA operate from there. If only one of those three would agree to rebuild and move into T2 and/or T3, that issue would be much-alleviated.

So, you fly in on, say, Delta and have to change planes to, say, United to continue your trip. How do you get from terminal to terminal? You walk or take a cab. Moving the terminals across the whole damned airport from each other only makes that problem worse.

The first complaint I remember reading about JFK, then called Idlewild, was that it was too damned difficult getting from one terminal to another, so this is not rocket science. They should have dealt with this problem back when they rebuilt LAX in the '80s, but they didn't. Even more surprising, they should have dealt with it before building this snazzy new international terminal (what % of passengers who use LAX fly international, anyway?), but they didn't. The idea of a central structure connected to the terminals by some kind of shuttle is interesting, but if you build it in the middle of the airport, where do people park? And if you increase the capacity of the airport without doing something about getting people from all over L. A. to and from the airport, you've just made getting to and from the airport worse than it already is.

I go back to the point I made in my earlier post, L. A. should have begun planning for a new approach thirty years ago.

[Quixote]

http://www.lawa.org/laxspas/LAX_Solutions.aspx

[Rail Claimore]

Originally Posted by jg6544

So, you fly in on, say, Delta and have to change planes to, say, United to continue your trip. How do you get from terminal to terminal? You walk or take a cab. Moving the terminals across the whole damned airport from each other only makes that problem worse.

The first complaint I remember reading about JFK, then called Idlewild, was that it was too damned difficult getting from one terminal to another, so this is not rocket science. They should have dealt with this problem back when they rebuilt LAX in the '80s, but they didn't. Even more surprising, they should have dealt with it before building this snazzy new international terminal (what % of passengers who use LAX fly international, anyway?), but they didn't. The idea of a central structure connected to the terminals by some kind of shuttle is interesting, but if you build it in the middle of the airport, where do people park? And if you increase the capacity of the airport without doing something about getting people from all over L. A. to and from the airport, you've just made getting to and from the airport worse than it already is.

I go back to the point I made in my earlier post, L. A. should have begun planning for a new approach thirty years ago.

If LAWA or whatever authority was in charge back then, could have foreseen what I mentioned in my previous post, they probably would have built LAX to look like IAH today, an airport oriented for both a large amount of O&D traffic and connecting traffic. LAX is the third busiest international gateway into the US behind JFK and MIA, with about 16 million int'l ppa, most of which are O&D. And a disproportionate amount of international traffic at LAX is high-yield flights to Asia and Australia. TBIT was horribly outdated compared to the new terminal at SFO. Complaints from Transpax carriers are what spurred the powers that be into action on TBIT. International passengers will get better treatment first for these reasons.

[jg6544]

Originally Posted by Rail Claimore

I'm not sure how long you've been flying, but I flew frequently across the Pacific to Japan and South Korea in the 1980's and early 1990's before Russian Air Space was opened up. LAX had just done a major expansion in the early 80's with the current Bradley Terminal and T2, plus separating arrival and departure roadways for cars. No one back then foresaw the types of planes we'd have that could fly to East Asia nonstop from the Eastern US and the increase in transpacific traffic from those hubs making daily flights to Tokyo and Seoul viable from airports like ORD and ATL. Everyone and everything in those days was routed through LAX if you didn't want to stop in ANC or fork over obscene amounts of money to fly on limited one-stops from back East.

On your point about SFO, from a passenger perspective, it's only marginally better than LAX because it has more terminal space per passenger. But it suffers from the same problems for connecting passengers as LAX does if you're flying any airline but United: you have to re-clear security.

I haven't taken an international flight since 1981, when I lived on the east coast. Since then, all the flying I've done has been domestic. Since the security hysteria took over and the airlines began deciding they were in the business of treating their passengers like they were cargo, I haven't flown much at all if I could avoid it (when I go to San Francisco, most of the time I drive).

SFO does still make people re-clear security, but they have dealt with the more difficult problem with their internal trains and their connection directly to BART (part of the reason SFO is better is that the Bay Area actually has a mass transit system, unlike L. A.). SFO is also cleaner, brighter, and has better amenities. The only part of SFO I don't like is that damned, long United concourse and even with that, they made getting to the end of it easier by installing moving walks, technology that was introduced in the late '50s at the old Love Field airport in Dallas. LAX simply hasn't kept up or even attempted to.

[atlantaguy]

Originally Posted by jg6544

Fortunately, I haven't been to New York in nearly 20 years and feel no need to go anytime in the foreseeable future. But even 20 years ago, those three airports were awful.

You wouldn't like what you would see today, trust me.

As Rail said, Delta is making major improvements at JFK (and LaGuardia also), and American has actually built a beautiful but severely underutilized terminal at JFK.

Despite all this, all three are bigger dumps than ever, imo. And Newark is just hideous, with the worst delays in the country. Add in a surly and bitter post Continental/United merger workforce in Newark, and it's a pain in the ass that I hate to even think about. And I get the honor of spending 3 1/2 hours there after a SoCal redeye next Sunday morning!

[jg6544]

Originally Posted by Westsidelife

http://www.lawa.org/laxspas/LAX_Solutions.aspx

The green parts should have been the FIRST things they started on and completed. I'd use the remote parking lots (Lord knows, they're cheaper) if it weren't for having to load myself and my luggage onto some damned lumbering shuttle bus and then spend the next half hour or so wandering aimlessly around the airport until the wretched thing finally fetched up at my terminal. It has to be RAIL-based and the trains, trams, or whatever have to run almost like elevators, never more than a couple of minutes before the next one comes along, all day, seven days a week.

[jg6544]

Originally Posted by atlantaguy

You wouldn't like what you would see today, trust me.

The first conviction I developed after moving to California in 1988 is that, if Columbus had landed on the west coast, there would never have been an east coast. :-)

[atlantaguy]

Originally Posted by jg6544

The first conviction I developed after moving to California in 1988 is that, if Columbus had landed on the west coast, there would never have been an east coast. :-)

LOL! I can understand this point of view, even though I do love it here. I also have grown to love (most of) the Left Coast equally, though.

Many on SSP don't consider the SE to be a part of the East Coast -despite the fact that I live in a State that has Atlantic Ocean frontage and we are in the Eastern time zone.

This has been a very interesting and civilized discussion re: LAX that I have realy enjoyed..... Can't wait to be there in a couple of days.

[Rail Claimore]

Originally Posted by atlantaguy

LOL! I can understand this point of view, even though I do love it here. I also have grown to love (most of) the Left Coast equally, though.

Many on SSP don't consider the SE to be a part of the East Coast -despite the fact that I live in a State that has Atlantic Ocean frontage and we are in the Eastern time zone.

This has been a very interesting and civilized discussion re: LAX that I have realy enjoyed..... Can't wait to be there in a couple of days.

Atlanta is in some ways the Los Angeles of the East Coast. Both are basically the anchors on each end of the southern half of the country. They also have a similar culture-relationship with the respective corners of the country they're in, making them a little different from their respective-coast peers.

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

i r4eally dont find LAX that hard to navigate nor traffic clogged. ive used the airport over 100 times and i really dont get the bad wrap. now aesthetically speaking, its a dump as well as having shitty transit connections, but those are being worked on. I hate O'hare, JFK and Newark with a passion however.

[Quixote]

Theoretically, you could move all the T1 flights (and some or all of the T3 flights) to the new T0. Then when the new Midfield Satellite Concourse (15-25 gates, I would imagine) is done, you could transfer all the international flights out of T2 there. Then you could construct a consolidated terminal in place of T1-3, thereby relieving some of the congestion in the southern terminals.

[jg6544]

Originally Posted by Westsidelife

Theoretically, you could move all the T1 flights (and some or all of the T3 flights) to the new T0. Then when the new Midfield Satellite Concourse (15-25 gates, I would imagine) is done, you could transfer all the international flights out of T2 there. Then you could construct a consolidated terminal in place of T1-3, thereby relieving some of the congestion in the southern terminals.

My own choice would be to install some kind of tram service that connects all of the terminals - it should be on a dedicated track and trains should arrive at intervals of no less than two minutes. Then, I would install moving walks within all of the terminals and in the interconnected ones (e.g. 6, 7, and 8). Then I would worry about shifting airlines to "balance" the north and south sides of the airport. Finally, the airport authority should move heaven and earth to persuade, induce, bludgeon the airlines into moving more traffic to other airports - Burbank, Long Beach, Ontario, John Wayne to cut down on congestion. If you live in Pasadena, say, it shouldn't take you longer to get to the airport than your flight is likely to take.

[Ragnar]

Originally Posted by jg6544

Finally, the airport authority should move heaven and earth to persuade, induce, bludgeon the airlines into moving more traffic to other airports - Burbank, Long Beach, Ontario, John Wayne to cut down on congestion. If you live in Pasadena, say, it shouldn't take you longer to get to the airport than your flight is likely to take.

Interestingly I live in Glendale, and I actually would LOVE to fly out of Burbank more often. It's about 10 minutes away, and clearing security usually takes 5 minutes.

Unfortunately the prices are usually not competitive.

For instance, looking up on Travelocity, next week to SFO (a frequent destination for me):
Bubank: $503 roundtrip
LAX: $177 roundtrip

to Las Vegas
Burbank: $377
LAX: $101

The prices are ridiculous from some of the smaller airports, so that makes everyone want to go to LAX.

And for everyone complaining about LAX, it's still a remarkably efficient airport in terms of ontime departures and limited airplane taxiing time (very few queues to take off). It puts SFO (and most other large airports) to shame from that perspective.

[Rail Claimore]

Originally Posted by Ragnar

Interestingly I live in Glendale, and I actually would LOVE to fly out of Burbank more often. It's about 10 minutes away, and clearing security usually takes 5 minutes.

Unfortunately the prices are usually not competitive.

For instance, looking up on Travelocity, next week to SFO (a frequent destination for me):
Bubank: $503 roundtrip
LAX: $177 roundtrip

to Las Vegas
Burbank: $377
LAX: $101

The prices are ridiculous from some of the smaller airports, so that makes everyone want to go to LAX.

And for everyone complaining about LAX, it's still a remarkably efficient airport in terms of ontime departures and limited airplane taxiing time (very few queues to take off). It puts SFO (and most other large airports) to shame from that perspective.

Agreed: prices are not usually competitive in any of those other airports: the only other SoCal airport that's competitive with LAX tends to be SAN, but it's only convenient for those in southern OC and the southern stretches of the IE.

And I definitely agree about on-time departures. That's the beauty of having larger planes in fewer gates. The Bradley West project is only the beginning of a new LAX. Within a couple decades, if not sooner, most of the airport will be as nice and efficient as that.