Security Eclipses Capacity in Plan for LAX

Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn on Wednesday formally laid out his $9-billion plan for remaking Los Angeles International Airport, saying that the effort is necessary for the region’s economic health and the airport’s security.

Despite a lukewarm response from some City Council members and opposition from some airlines, which would foot half the bill, Hahn insisted that he would press ahead with the plan.

“We are investing in our future here,” the mayor said. Without a remodel of the nation’s fifth-busiest airport, he warned, the region would risk losing lucrative international flights to competing airports in Las Vegas, Phoenix and San Francisco.

“Doing nothing is not an option,” Hahn said. “We have an antiquated airport from the standpoint of modern aviation. If we don’t do something, people will fly somewhere else.”

But reception to the plan so far has made clear that Hahn faces a formidable challenge in persuading the airlines, City Council and public that it makes sense to spend $9 billion on a plan that does not expand the facility.

A decade ago, when then-Mayor Richard Riordan proposed spending $12 billion or more to remake LAX, the point of the plan was much debated but easily understood: expand the facility to accommodate an inevitable crush of more passengers.

By contrast, Hahn has been concerned primarily about security and fulfilling a campaign promise to limit the number of passengers at the airport.

As a result, he has proposed significant changes in how people get to and through LAX, but he wants the aiport designed so that it won’t grow much beyond the present capacity.

Instead, the mayor challenged the airlines and other Southern California communities to pick up the slack by shifting more flights to regional airports in Burbank, Ontario, Orange County and elsewhere.

Hahn’s proposal would dramatically rework LAX by building a check-in center about a mile to the east, knocking down the parking structures in the center of the airport and replacing them with a new 6.5-million square-foot passenger terminal, and moving the runways on both sides of the airport farther apart.

City officials argued to a capacity crowd at a Los Angeles studio Wednesday that the mayor’s plan would make LAX more convenient and discourage terrorists from viewing the bustling facility as a target.

But their presentation left many critics unswayed.

Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, whose district includes LAX, said she continues to have “serious questions about whether the plan deals with security issues, whether the plan can be economically viable at the cost of nearly $9 billion, and whether that cost is sustainable in the region.”

She said a scaled back version of the plan may be preferable.

Even many of the elected officials and business leaders those who joined the mayor at Wednesday’s news conference stopped short of fully endorsing his plan.

Airlines Divided

“We want to express our collective support to Hahn’s effort to modernize the facility to foster the economic benefits that are inherent for the region,” said Alan Wayne, a spokesman for United Airlines and a group of carriers known as the Star Alliance.

A trade group representing the majority of airlines that do business at LAX released a statement Wednesday saying that the mayor’s plan “does not appear to enhance security, and makes it harder for Southern Californians to use LAX by restricting private vehicles from the terminals and funneling passengers through a remote facility. The airlines strongly urge the mayor to reconsider this plan.”

But Hahn signaled Wednesday that he does not plan to significantly alter his plan to meet the airlines’ concerns.

“The airlines fought what’s going on at JFK [in New York] and they fought passenger screening and baggage screening,” he said.

“Eventually you have to do something for their own good. Whether they see it or not, this is the only plan that has a chance of going forward.”

Last Face Lift in 1980s

The 75-year-old airport hasn’t had a major face lift since the 1984 Olympics, when city officials added an upper deck to its horseshoe-shaped access road and built the Tom Bradley International Terminal.

The airfield was last redone in the 1960s. Today, larger jets such as Boeing 747s and 777s jockey for space at remote gates near the sand dunes where there’s more room for the wide-body aircraft.

Hahn also must persuade regional airports that they must take on what he calls “their fair share” of growing air traffic in Southern California.

Increasing Demand

Transportation officials expect demand for airline service in the five-county region to grow from 88.6 million annual passengers in 2000 to 146.5 million by 2015.

Last year, LAX handled about 56 million travelers, or about 75% of the region’s air traffic. In its peak year, 2000, 67.3 million passengers used the airport, and a government report said its “theoretical capacity” is 78 million.

But many regional airports are unable to take on additional travelers.

Local noise restrictions prohibit John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana and Long Beach Airport from accepting significantly more flights. Burbank has been unable to expand because of intense community opposition. And Ontario International Airport, where residents are willing to accept more airplanes, has been unable to sustain international flights.

Concerned about the long-term effect of those restrictions, Hahn asked federal officials earlier this year to allow the city to operate a commercial airport at the former El Toro Marine base in Orange County.

“I’m astonished that people are so short-sighted and they lack so much vision that they don’t see how important an airport can be in south Orange County,” Hahn said Wednesday.

“If you say LAX is only going to handle 78 million annual passengers, this requires the growth to be handled somewhere else. Look at the rest of the country. If you go to New York City, you have the option of flying out of JFK or La Guardia or Newark, and in Washington you can use National, Baltimore or Dulles.”

The Department of Transportation has yet to respond to the mayor’s proposal, although the plan has elicited a firestorm of protest from elected officials and residents in Orange County, who voted overwhelmingly last year to turn the old Marine base into a park and other uses.

When Hahn first released an outline of his LAX plan last summer, it didn’t include details about where passengers and baggage would be screened.

The mayor’s assertion that his plan would make travelers more secure came under increasing scrutiny recently when Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice) commissioned a report from the Rand Corp.

The report found that the mayor’s plan would make passengers and airline workers more vulnerable to car bombings or chemical or biological weapons attacks by consolidating travelers at a facility near the San Diego Freeway. Today, passengers check in at one of nine terminals.

In response, the city’s Airport Commission asked a San Diego-based private security consulting firm to study the mayor’s proposal.

The firm found that the modernization plan is “overwhelmingly a better plan for LAX” than the current facility, and provides “a much higher degree of safety and security” than currently exists.

The study by Science Applications International Corp. said Hahn’s plan would disperse people and create “concentric rings” of security, through which passengers would pass on their way to terminals.

Security also would be enhanced at the check-in center itself by plainclothes officers and bomb-sniffing dogs, by facial recognition technology and by futuristic devices that would check passengers for weapons and explosives as they made their way to a people mover, said Airport Commission President Ted Stein. He said many of these systems are not yet on the market.

Cost-Effectiveness

Harman was not appeased by the security study.

“On first reading, it does not appear that the mayor has made changes ... that address these concerns or respond to the recommendations the [Rand] report made for cost-effective security improvements,” she said.

Jack Riley, the director of Rand’s public safety and justice program, said that despite the Science Applications International Corp. report, he still believes “security tweaks and improvements” could be made at LAX for substantially less than $9 billion.

Hahn said the new plan, by providing more parking away from the airport, avoids the problem faced by the city after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when it had to close the central parking garages, which significantly hindered airport operations.

“This design hardens the target at LAX and makes it a much safer alternative than any other alternative being discussed,” Hahn said, adding that passengers “are not being dispersed right now. They are all coming into the airport off of Century and Sepulveda [boulevards] so everybody is coming through one choke point right now into the airport.”

Although an environmental impact report released Wednesday found that the renovation would create “significant unavoidable” negative impacts on traffic, noise and pollution, Hahn’s plan seeks to avoid some of the pitfalls of Riordan’s expansion proposals, including creation of a ring road that goes through Westchester, Hahn said.

The mayor’s proposal, known as Alternative D, joins three controversial expansion plans devised by his predecessor. Hahn scrapped those plans after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in favor of his scaled-down version.

Asked about reports that his version of modernization would not provide any additional economic growth in the long term, Hahn acknowledged that, but said his proposal would protect the existing role that the airport plays in Southern California’s economy.

Hahn said residents and business leaders will have a chance to weigh in on the plan during nine public hearings to be held Aug. 11 to 23. Others called on the mayor to extend the public input period.