It may be three years behind schedule, but the top executive at Los Angeles International Airport promises that the delay-plagued people mover train should open before the end of the year.
In an interview with the Business Journal, Los Angeles World Airports Chief Executive John Ackerman said the people mover train, dubbed SkyLink, still must complete two-months of track testing and another two months of evaluations and final permits before the trains can fully operate. But he expressed confidence that this will be the year passengers will finally be able to hop aboard.
“Yes, it will open by the end of the year,” Ackerman said. “We’re as anxious as your readers are to get this train moving.”
Once the train opens, the ubiquitous Uber, Lyft and taxi vehicles will be capped within the airport terminal loop, Ackerman said. Most of these rideshare vehicles will instead head to a ground transportation center near the economy parking structure, which is next to one of the SkyLink stations east of the terminal loop.
“From a user perspective, it will be far less chaotic and congested,” Ackerman said.
These were the highlights of the Business Journal interview with the Los Angeles World Airports chief, who has only rarely granted interviews since taking the helm more than two years ago.
Ackerman also addressed LAX’s lagging performance in passenger totals since the Covid-19 pandemic, a new program to give LAX terminals a more Los Angeles vibe, LAWA’s plan to bring some $100 million in investment to Van Nuys Airport and his efforts to improve working conditions for airport agency employees.
People mover finally moving?
The 2.25-mile SkyLink people mover line has six stations: three in the central terminal loop, one next to the economy parking lot and ground transportation center, a station that connects to the Metro K Line train, and the final station at the consolidated rental car structure near the 405 Freeway. Trains are expected to run every two minutes during peak times and will take 10 minutes to travel one way along the route.
Construction on the $3.34 billion project began in 2019 and was originally slated to wrap up in 2023. However, the project has faced repeated delays.
In the last two years, there have been a series of disputes between LAWA and the construction consortium tasked with building the rail system. The consortium, known as LAX Integrated Express Solutions, or LINXS, now has five main contractors: Fluor Corp. (based in Irving, Texas); Balfour Beatty (London); Grupo ACS (Madrid); Flatiron Construction Corp. (Broomfield, Colorado); and Alstom SA (Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine, France).
According to LAist, the latest dispute has centered around repairs to electrical equipment in a metering cabinet. The repairs have been carried out, but that LAWA and the construction consortium are at odds over who should pay for the roughly $36 million cost of the repair work, LAist reported.
Ackerman declined to comment on the specifics of the dispute, but he did offer his general thoughts on the construction delays.
“I would just say that this is a complicated project with many companies involved and it’s not unusual for disputes to come up,” he said. “We’re disappointed that we’ve had to wait this long on this train. But we are doing our best to get through this and we are laser-focused on getting that train safely into operation.”
Uber, Lyft and taxi caps
Ackerman said that the day the SkyLink train starts full operation, people driving into and out of LAX will notice an immediate improvement in congestion.
“On Day 1, every one of the shuttle buses will leave the central terminal area, never to return,” he said. “That’s not just the car-rental shuttles that will disappear entirely now that the car rental facility is open, but also hotel shuttles and other shuttles.”
The latter types of shuttles will instead be routed to the same ground transportation center that the Uber, Lyft and taxi vehicles will use.
“We’ve built over a mile of custom curbs at the GTC that should easily be able to handle all these vehicles,” he said. “And it’s all just steps away from the SkyLink station.”
Ackerman said that while final details are still being worked out, there will be what he termed “dynamic caps” on the number of rideshare vehicles allowed into the terminal area. The caps will vary according to time of day and the traffic conditions within the terminal loop.
$1 billion in upgraded roadways
Improvements are also in store for those who choose to drive into the terminal loop, Ackerman said.
The biggest project will be the reconfiguration of the intersection of Century and Sepulveda boulevards. A key aim will be to separate traffic bound to and from the airport from traffic that just wants to get through the Westchester area. That will involve expanding the use of elevated roadways.
The Board of Airport Commissioners approved the project last November.
Ackerman said that roughly half of this work should be done before the 2028 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games, with the remainder completed by the end of 2030.
“When all this is done, and you combine it with the SkyLink, it will feel like a profoundly different airport than people experience today,” he said.
Terminal work
On the terminal front, much attention was paid last fall to the launch of the roughly $1.7 billion renovation of Terminal 5, which is set to wrap up in time for the 2028 Summer Games. That follows the massive $2.3 billion renovation of Terminals 2 and 3 that mostly finished in late 2022.
But Ackerman said a broader effort is also under way that will encompass all the terminals – giving the terminals more of an “L.A. vibe.”
When he did an initial walk through all of the LAX terminals, he said that one of the biggest things he noticed was that most of the time he couldn’t tell he was in Los Angeles.
“We are now on a mission to make the terminals feel more like L.A,” he said. “We even have an observatory we’re building into our airport that resembles Griffith Observatory – that’s a big gesture.”
Work has already begun on a refresh of the Tom Bradley International Terminal. The exact project cost has not been specified, as it’s part of a much larger $5 billion construction services master contract.
Lag in passengers
Ackerman also addressed the difficult time LAX has had in the recovery of passenger tallies to pre-pandemic levels.
Most other major airports in the nation – including Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, Denver International Airport and the three New York metro area airports have either recovered past pre-pandemic passenger traffic levels or come close.
However, starting in 2023, LAX has consistently lagged these airports, with the shortfall always in the double-digit percentages. The situation was made worse with last year’s broad downturn in the domestic air travel industry.
During the first quarter, 16.5 million passengers went through terminal gates at LAX, up 0.5% from last year but still down 18% from 2019 prior to the pandemic.
Ackerman cited several factors for the lagging recovery at LAX. One was the lack of a major domestic airline hub, such as Delta Air Lines at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
However, he said an overarching factor has been the bursting of a bubble in domestic air travel that peaked before the pandemic. Roughly two-thirds of LAX’s passenger travel comes from domestic passengers.
“There was considerable ‘irrational exuberance’ last decade, with all those new budget airlines forming and expanding,” Ackerman said. “Much of that capacity has been coming off in recent years – just look at (Dania Beach, Florida-based) Spirit Airlines that is now half the size it was a decade ago. And we have felt that impact.”
A few months after taking the helm at LAWA, Ackerman restarted an air service development team, tasked with bringing more flights into LAX.
“That took some time to get off the ground,” he said. “We were just starting to see some green shoots of added flights in January and February and then, ‘boom!’ the Iran war happened and jet fuel prices went through the roof.”
Ackerman now says the best-case scenario for the rest of this year is that the number of flights and passengers remain flat compared to last year. That’s in spite of a summer surge expected from the FIFA World Cup, which kicks off in June.
Van Nuys Airport modernization
Los Angeles World Airports also runs Van Nuys Airport in the heart of the San Fernando Valley, one of the largest general aviation and private aviation airports in the nation.
Ackerman said that investment in the facilities at Van Nuys has lagged over the last decade, leaving many of the buildings “not in good condition,” as Ackerman put it.
Over the past couple of years, he said LAWA has put out requests for proposals to award six leases to major tenants.
“These tenants will invest on aggregate approximately $100 million into airport improvements,” he said. “Our aim is to deliver the best airport for the customer and for the community.”
Some of the improvements will include beautification along the airport perimeter where it interacts with the surrounding communities, he said.
In recent months, especially in the wake of last year’s crash near Washington Reagan National Airport involving a jet aircraft and a military helicopter, attention has focused on the proximity of Van Nuys Airport to Hollywood Burbank Airport a few miles to the east.
Ackerman said that aviation safety is the responsibility of the Federal Aviation Administration.
“We have certainly given our input to the FAA and earlier this year, they did make some changes to the flight patterns at Van Nuys to address some of these safety concerns,” he said.
Ackerman has also turned his attention to improving workplace conditions for the roughly 3,200 employees he oversees at Los Angeles World Airports.
“The biggest surprise when I took this job was the appalling conditions that many of our employees labored under,” he said, referring to some of the old bungalow-style buildings the administrative offices had been in. “Our employees cannot effectively provide good customer service if we don’t help our employees.”
He said one major improvement is the consolidation of many of the employees into a more modern office tower on Century Boulevard in Westchester, just east of the airport. The move-in is expected to be completed within the next 90 days.
