The countdown to the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games has sent Los Angeles International Airport into a $1.5-billion sprint to rebuild its roads, drawing ire from critics who argue the plan leaves the airport\u2019s most infamous bottleneck \u2014 the \u201chorseshoe\u201d \u2014 largely untouched.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles World Airports Board of Airport Commissioners on Thursday approved the final $1-billion phase<\/a> of spending for its new roadway improvement plan, which aims to streamline traffic flow at airport entrances and exits and reduce jams on public roads like Sepulveda and Century boulevards. It\u2019s set to be complete just two months before the world arrives in 2028.<\/p>\n Opponents assert the effort will not relieve airport traffic, and could even make it worse.<\/p>\n LAWA officials, however, said it\u2019ll make getting to the airport safer and separate airport travelers from everyone else on the road more efficiently.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ATMP Roadway project is one of the most significant investments made to improve traffic in and around LAX,\u201d Board President Karim Webb said in a statement.<\/p>\n Project designers promise smoother travel on the elevated segments to and from the U-shaped roadway around the terminal area commonly called the horseshoe. They said traffic in the loop itself will \u201croughly remain the same,\u201d but expect entering and exiting will be far easier.<\/p>\n With the final funds allocated this week to Skanska-Flatiron Joint Venture, the project\u2019s design-builder, the 4.4-mile reconfiguration aims to remove more than 500 cars from Sepulveda Boulevard at any given time, loading them into a new queue en route to the horseshoe. It also should make pedestrian crossing safer and reduce time spent at stoplights.<\/p>\n Airport officials said the new system will reroute drivers around airport hotels instead of funneling them onto the skyway ramp. Currently, traffic from Lincoln and Sepulveda boulevards squeezes eight lanes of cars into a single ramp, creating a persistent choke point. To ease that pressure, the agency has carved into its right-of-way to create two new off-ramps for airport access and three \u201cthrough lanes\u201d that will allow uninterrupted travel toward Imperial Highway and the 105 Freeway.<\/p>\n Jacob Wasserman, who manages research at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, warns the traffic nirvana won\u2019t last.<\/p>\n \u201cInitially, these changes could alleviate traffic in the area and on the freeways to some degree, but it\u2019s going to fill up again,\u201d he said. \u201cWe all have Google Maps. When there\u2019s less traffic, more cars will naturally file in and it\u2019ll fill up. It\u2019s going to move more people in total, but it\u2019s not going to fix traffic.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s talking about \u201cinduced demand,\u201d a phenomenon in which building more roads or expanding existing ones leads to an increase in the volume of traffic, often causing congestion to return to its previous state or worsen over time.<\/p>\n Wasserman called the skyway remodel a \u201czombie project,\u201d left over from a paused terminal expansion that included plans for two new concourses, \u201cstill moving forward on its own inertia.\u201d<\/p>\n But that terminal expansion plan has been paused because of lulls in demand. Prepandemic projections anticipated more than 100 million yearly visitors to LAX in the years to come. But last year the airport had just 77 million travelers, 12% lower than its 2019 high<\/a>.<\/p>\n The concourse projects are on hold and moving forward on them will depend on future demand, a LAWA spokesperson said. <\/p>\n Other concerns include a tight deadline for the roadway\u2019s first phase. It\u2019s set to be completed two months ahead of the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Worse still, said transit advocate and Streets for All founder Michael Schneider, LAWA is relying on FlatironDragados, a civil infrastructure contractor involved in the delayed Automated People Mover (APM) shuttle project.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re pushing this through aggressively with the same contractor that screwed up the people mover,\u201d Schneider said. \u201cWe\u2019re expecting that this tight time frame is going to happen by the Olympics. It\u2019s kind of a joke.\u201d<\/p>\n