New plans to alleviate traffic congestion on Saticoy Street could speed up a long-awaited expansion of the Flyaway facility near Van Nuys Airport.

First proposed by City Councilwoman Laura Chick more than two years ago, facilities for the popular service that provides an inexpensive shuttle bus ride from the San Fernando Valley to Los Angeles International Airport could be expanded in the next year.

Responding to one of the biggest concerns by area business owners and residents regarding Flyaway traffic, a design team is now finishing a conceptual design for an expanded Van Nuys Flyaway, said Todd Osborne, project manager for Daniel Mann Johnson and Mendenhall, which is overseeing the project.

Most criticism of a revamped Flyaway project so far has centered on traffic moving in and out of the parking lot east of the Van Nuys Airport.

Traffic spilling onto Saticoy Street from the Flyaway was a major issue, Osborne said. So was pedestrian safety, since the current Flyaway configuration forces travelers to dodge traffic as they walk from their parked cars to the terminal.

The new conceptual design has the terminal next to a new parking structure, “so basically, you just go straight into the terminal,” Osborne said.

With the new plans, vehicles will not be able to exit the Flyaway onto Saticoy Street at all. Instead, vehicles will enter and exit from and onto Woodley Avenue, Osborne said. Buses headed for LAX would only be able to go west onto Woodley Avenue.

“Saticoy Street was really a sensitive issue. Getting the traffic off that was really a primary concern of the project,” Osborne said. “There are no cars or buses really going near the residential area or the elementary school on Saticoy Street (under the redesign plan).”

The redirection of traffic onto Woodley is just fine with Josephine Rowley, owner of Beeps, a hamburger and hot dog stand at Woodley Avenue and Sherman Way.

“The more traffic, the better,” said Rowley, whose stand has been in the same spot for 17 years. “More traffic will be great. People who want a hamburger or hot dog can grab one on the way to their flight.”