The commission that oversees Los Angeles International Airport voted Thursday to allocate an additional $400 million to resolve legal claims over the long-awaited Automated People Mover train.
Pending final approval by the Los Angeles City Council, the approval by the Los Angeles World Airports Board of Airport Commissioners clears the way for the delayed project to finish construction. Officials expect the train to be completed by Dec. 8, 2025, and operational by January 2026.
LAWA Executive Director John Ackerman said he is confident the schedule will be met, but cautioned that those dates are not concrete.
“We are building this on land that is not owned by LAWA, we are interacting with other agencies over which we have no control and sometimes there are unforeseen problems in projects of this complexity,” Ackerman said.
Construction on the 3.6-kilometer elevated train was expected to be completed in 2024, in preparation for the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympics. Although the project is 95 percent complete, disputes between the airport and the contractor, LAX Integrated Express Solutions, or LINXS, over schedules, production and compensation have led to significant delays.
Ackerman said everyone involved is now receiving weekly calls to address issues as they arise so that problems don't “festerate and grow.”
The project is part of a $30 billion overhaul of one of the world's busiest airports. The new appropriations will come from reserve funds, officials said, and will increase the automated passenger transportation system's budget from $2.9 billion to $3.34 billion.
The approved funds include a $50 million contingency fund that may not be used in full or at all.
As LAX currently operates, hundreds of thousands of travelers and employees enter and exit the airport's congested horseshoe-shaped loop each week without any public transportation alternatives, as most major airports offer.
Transit experts and airport officials expect the People Mover to significantly reduce traffic by offering an easy connection to the Metro and a new consolidated rental car and parking facility.
A new LAX/Metro transit station at Aviation and 96th is set to open in November, and rental car company Avis is expected to begin operating at the new facility in August, Ackerman said.
“We're going to reduce 42 million vehicle miles per year on Los Angeles roads. I think that's a huge achievement and one that will make a difference in the lives of Angelenos,” he said.
“When I got here, I was told that the easiest way to lose a friend in Los Angeles is to ask them to drive to the airport on Friday night. This is a problem we need to solve.”
Once operational, the train will run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with a frequency of two minutes during peak hours, from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. Officials expect the train to save 117,000 vehicle miles each day and carry about 30 million passengers each year.
The hope is that if more people take advantage of the train and reduce trips to and from the airport, traffic congestion will ease, a possibility that could have a ripple effect throughout the city.
