L.A.'s airport train that doesn't go to the airport [View all]

CA: Newest Train to LAX Will Still Come Up Short, at Least at First

Laura J. Nelson
Source: Los Angeles Times
Created: August 12, 2013


Wrapping up a Los Angeles vacation and an hourlong, two-train trek from downtown, Benjamin Levert and his slightly harried wife and daughters just wanted to check in for their flight back to France. Exiting the Metro Green Line at the Aviation/LAX station, they towed their four suitcases down a long escalator.

To a parking lot.

"Where is the terminal?" Levert asked his wife in French, looking around and raising his voice over the whoosh of overhead traffic on the 105 Freeway. "What kind of an airport is this?"

The Leverts had stumbled into what critics consider one of L.A.'s great planning failures: a $1-billion train that stops 2.5 miles from passenger terminals of the nation's third-busiest airport.

Now, a generation after the Green Line earned the nickname "the train to nowhere," planners in the midst of a multibillion-dollar rail boom are preparing to break ground on a second LAX-adjacent train that is facing similar issues -- and offering a new opportunity to complete a key missing link in the region's sprawling 87.7-mile commuter rail network. ............................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.masstransitmag.com/news/11102130/newest-train-to-lax-will-still-come-up-short-at-least-at-first