Finally, some progress around the nightmare that has been travel to and through Los Angeles International Airport.

Billions of dollars have been approved to be appropriated through bond offerings and voter-mandated sales tax increases to fund a series of improvements, from an automated people mover to take passengers to and from new light-rail stations to a consolidated car rental facility. Airlines are upgrading terminals as well, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into refurbishing what can best be described as embarrassing gateways to the nation’s second-largest city.

It’s all long overdue, and all still years and years from completion. One can imagine that should Los Angeles win its bid for the 2024 Olympic Games, some of these projects might still be underway when the event rolls around.

But like a flu shot, the short-term pain of all this construction should be worth the long-term gain it will bring us.

So a word of caution.

If the expansion of the 405 freeway – costly and drawn out – taught us anything, it is that we need to adapt our infrastructure to the needs we anticipate having down the road, not the needs we have now. The 405 through the Sepulveda Pass, for all its extra space, feels just as crowded as ever (ask Elon Musk – or look at the photos from the Thanksgiving weekend).

As Roger Johnson, deputy executive director of Los Angeles World Airports, pointed out to us this week, the roads around LAX were designed to accommodate an airport that saw 40 million annual passengers. LAX saw 81 million passengers last year.

As plans to expand access to the airport area move from the drawing board to implementation, it is important that they take into consideration not just regional population growth and anticipated increases in passenger volume, but also the technological innovations that are already beginning to reshape how we move around the city.

Building roadways and rail lines that are not adaptable to the prospect of autonomous vehicles or wired to facilitate communication with devices that might yet be developed to share data and speed travel would be akin to widening a freeway based on yesterday’s traffic patterns and taking a decade to build it out.