Los Angeles: Finally, LAX has a train!
One of the world's largest airports has fixed a fatal flaw... almost.
Hey! You might have noticed, but this blog has a new name. I love Toronto, but since I want to talk about transit everywhere, the new name makes more sense. Expect posts on Toronto as usual, but also posts about travels and goings on all over the world — from new buildings, to new subway lines, to big new stations! If that excites you, make sure to share this article and subscribe!
Something that I think is remarkable is that LAX, one of the largest and most important airports in the world, does not have an air rail link. Indeed, I fibbed in the title. While the big transport hub that will connect LA’s growing rail network to the airport is open, you can’t actually take trains from downtown LA to the airport’s terminals. However, the city did just open a massive new station in the general airport area, and it’s big and rather impressive looking, so I decided it was worth diving into this project and talking about whether it is the transformation many hope for.
Since the airport station isn’t actually at the terminals, to get to them you’ll need to rely on an automated people mover system, which is not yet operating and won’t be until sometime next year — your main option will be buses in the meantime. The big transit station is in the general airport area, in much the way that (ridiculously) many airport hotels aren’t really walkable from the terminals.
Let’s actually talk about the station itself. Right off the bat, the cost was like $1 billion+ USD, which is insane (if you have questions, the answers can probably be found at the Transit Costs Project). The station is actually very impressive: it’s got a massive footprint, a ton of escalators, a wide platform — everything feels way more like something you might see in London than a typical LA Metro station, even the architecture is impressive, so the cost is slightly more digestible. Still, this much money for a large fully above ground station that’s nicer than average, but not plated in gold is a huge problem.
I don’t want to be fully negative, so let’s get the other blunders out of the way rapid fire.
Theres a gated level crossing of a four lane street just north of the station, in a busy area. I like that LA uses gates on its stadtbahn lines when they cross roads, but they shouldn’t be crossing major roads at grade. Especially the Crenshaw line for reasons I will discuss later. While Melbourne has a huge “level crossing removal program” (because level crossings are unsafe and do make good transit harder, especially in auto-oriented places), LA may as well have a “level crossing installation program”.
Needing to take a people mover to the terminals is a bit annoying, but I’ve come around to the fact that most sufficiently large airports — Heathrow, Changi, Charles de Gaulle, Frankfurt, etc. have people movers for internal circulation, so whatever. Screen doors and frequent service might even rub off on Angelenos in a good way! (CHANTS ... Sepulveda … Sepulveda ... ). That being said, I hope eventually when Sepulveda extends down this way they think about better connecting the horseshoe.
I also am annoyed they didn’t design the people mover for seamless extension to Inglewood (to act as their people mover too). In some ways, this station could do great double duty as the access point for all those event passengers too. Most of the problem was also just putting all those venues in a crazy location though.
The station, though it is big, probably could have fit in the LAX terminal horseshoe; it would have complicated getting the lines there, and been more expensive, but it would have been better more than it would have been worse.
This is not just an LA problem (Toronto and London prominently come to mind too — Mount Dennis, and Old Oak Common), but one would hope a better use of land right next to a major transport interchange could be found than a big light rail yard. Sure, the APM yard next door kind of needs to be there, but the massive light rail yard right next to the station could be so many better things. Offices à la German airports, or a big mall à la Changi! If you must put a yard here, build a deck and construct stuff on top!
Credit: Google There isn’t direct service to the city centre, or really any major subcentre, which I will address later on….
Gasp, ok, that was a lot of complaining, but I swear, there is a lot to like here!
For one, the big light rail platform feels like something you would see in parts of the world where transit is a great way to get around. It looks great, it’s wide, and the next train displays are excellent (the only thing missing is screen doors, which you really should get for these prices). The soaring roofline and public art also both feel very Elizabeth line, and seem like they will be lovely in the warm LA climate. Even the bus shelters which extend like angled blades from the rail part of the station look nice and seem functional — with a pleasant plaza in the middle. I also love that there are up and down escalators all over the place, which should be more common than they are. I also love to see electric bus chargers at the loop, and honestly just like having a huge centralized bus station at the airport. There are too many North American cities with crap transit to the airport, and just locating all the buses in one nice facility does a lot to address that!
Travel times on metro also aren’t horrible, from the LAX station to Union (downtown-adjacent) the journey is about an hour, which is comparable to car travel times when I checked — pretty good stuff! The main issue is that you need to transfer, possibly more than once, which is going to be annoying with suitcases. On this front, there is sort of good news and bad news.
LA is a weird place because it’s building a transit network that is a sort of grid/radial hybrid (grid makes sense for uniform density which isn’t really LA, while radial makes sense for strong core, which definitely is not LA), when what would sort of make the most sense is a network that just cuts across the grid to connect major subcentres directly — this would be more expensive, but it would make transit way faster and more competitive with cars. Maybe that’ll be the solution if transit ever becomes a substantial part of the modeshare in the city and all the existing rather low-capacity lines (including the subway yes) are overwhelmed. The issue here is that the LAX station gets hit by two “grid” lines that both don’t go downtown — while LA doesn’t have a strong core, downtown still is the centre and an important destination.
Now, I do think it’s really nice that they managed to have both the east west C line (which is fully grade separated — begging to be automated and run super frequently), and the north-south K line, serve the station (including a wye on the C line to enable this was one of those rare examples of really forward-thinking transit planning in North America). This means that more places are within a one-seat ride of the station than would otherwise be the case (though not a one-seat ride from the airport because people mover!), it also means that the K line extends into an even longer and more sensible north-south line by taking over the former west end of the C line. Fortunately, there is a lot of discussion about extending the C line which would be useful, and the K line is going to get extended north to West Hollywood which will suddenly connect some serious urbanity and a major subcenter directly into the airport.
This project to extend the K line north will also finally make LA’s rail network much more rational, by creating a “corner” orbital that runs from southeast of downtown LA at the east of the C line, to slightly northwest of downtown LA at the north end of the K line. It will make the whole network much better, more resilient, and more useable, and suddenly make a lot of journeys better.
Of course, that extension will also mean direct connections onto the D line, which with it’s extension will put some of the densest parts of LA within pretty easy and direct reach of the airport as well. Network building is exciting!
Going forward, I think the station offers even more potential. For one, getting rid of that silly level crossing to the north could provide enough throughput to think about extending the C line northwest, perhaps to Venice and maybe even eventually continuing to meet the E Line and the D line by the ocean. I’d also love to see a semi-walkable business park area and hotel cluster built around the station; this would make it a convenient 24/7 location with a fast and easy link to the terminals where airport related services could be located — much potential here!
So basically, LA and LAX got a really nice new station, and while it’s far from perfect, it is a real and big improvement to the transit situation in one of North America’s biggest urban regions, and that’s really exciting. And best of all, the future is even brighter!
There is a long term plan to extend the C line to Santa Monica, though I don't think they plan to start construction on that extension until the 2060s. The Sepulveda line is supposed to reach the airport sometime before that.
Great write up. I’m with you on highlighting the positive though indeed $1 billion for a surface station is ludicrous. As it happens (no pun intended to CBC) I flew into LAX Friday evening, and the transit buses from the terminals horseshoe to the new Station looked reasonably patronized.
Myself, I did not use the Station, preferring to use the LAX FlyAway bus direct non-stop to Union Station (every 30 mins, $12.50) and from there the A line train to Pasadena. Using Metro from the LAX station would have involved one or two changes, depending on route. But I was also concerned about any potential curfew-related disruptions to downtown metro stations.
In any case, factoring in the time waiting for the bus and on the bus (and importantly the fact this was evening and well past rush hour) versus the transit bus and the Metro ride, the bus probably still came out a better option. Thirty minutes. But factoring in notorious rush hour traffic, when a trip from Union to LAX or vice versa can easily take 50 minutes or longer, taking Metro would be more competitive to Union Station.
Maybe this will boost ridership on the C (ex Green) line, for a long time the least used and most unloved of the lines (and also whose stations in the middle of the 105 freeway are not particularly pleasant) given the direct connection to the A line.
If California politicians were politically courageous, they could toll the existing state and county expressways (such as the 134, 60, state managed portions of the 110 and 210, etc) in LA to raise additional funding for transit. The then-conservative leadership in OC built a number of tolled expressways, so clearly there is precedent.