Goodbye, Lax Horseshoe – The long -awaited airport station station opens

Your friend from the outside of the city flies into Lax. “No problem,” say, trying to be a good friend. “I’m going to get you.

The regret sinks while sitting in traffic in congestioned “horseshoe”, the U -shaped road which connects to each of the lax terminals. But what could you do, tell your friend to take the train?

With the opening of Friday of the Lax Metro Transit Center, it is almost possible to go to the airport via the train, offering travelers an alternative to the use of their cars or their driving.

“(It is) a big step forward in the way people enter, outside and through our city,” Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, said on Friday during a ribbon cup event for the nearly a billion dollars station.

The station opens to the public at 5 p.m.

County supervisor and chairman of the metro board of directors Janice Hahn said the station serves as a “welcoming carpet” for the millions of people planned to visit Los Angeles for the Mega to come, including the 2028 Olympic Games.

Cyclists can take metro lines C or K directly to the lax metro transit center. The final railway connection at the airport, known as the automated memordial, will only open at the beginning of 2026, according to Los Angeles airports.

“Lax will become one of the country’s most accessible airports, if not the world,” said Harold Samms, deputy executive director of Los Angeles World Airports, about the people.

Until then, free shuttles running every 10 minutes will serve as a link between the lax metro transit center and the airport. The shuttles will stop at the lower level of each terminal in the pink columns which say “free lax shuttles”.

To celebrate the opening, Metro offers walks by train, bus, micro and free bike early Monday morning.

About the station

Approved for the first time by the Metro Board in June 2014, the Lax Metro Transit Center is located east of the airport on Boulevard Aviation and 96th Street.

In addition to the two light connections, the station also serves several metro bus routes and partner agency. There is a 16 bay bus square on the north side of the station where the buses will drop and collect the passengers.

Travelers can catch the shuttle to the airport from bus square.

The station has no pickup or deposit for personal vehicles, driving or taxis. Metro said it is “minimizing traffic traffic disturbances and Maintain smooth operations at the public transport center. »»

A storage installation contains 50 bikes.

Inside the station, travelers will have access to a waiting area, toilets, automatic ticket distributors and a metro customer service office. A sculpture made by the artist born in Los Angeles Glenn Kaino is suspended from the ceiling in the center of the station.

A long road

The first proposal to establish a rail connection at the airport occurred in the early 1960s. It involved building monorails with a terminus in Lax. But the plan has never been materialized due to “political wars and the lack of consensus”, “ Metro said in a blog article.

Another idea that gained ground was to add an airport stop to the then green line. Questions of funding and the lack of political will, two common enemies of the development of public infrastructure, as well as the security problems of the Federal Aviation Administration interrupted this idea, According to Metro.

The movement on the station which opened its doors on Friday began to resume in 2008, when Metro announced plans for the NOW-K line, and the Comté de la Comté de la Approved a sales tax of a semi-cent for rail projects.

The Metro Board decided on the current location in 2014.

Two years later, the voters approved another increase in the sales tax thanks to the M measurement, providing Metro with the reliable funding flow he needed to build the airport station.

The construction of the $ 900 million station began in 2021.

“It took decades of determination,” said Hahn at the ribbon cup event.

Airport travel habits

On average, in 2024, nearly 96,000 vehicles covered Lax, according to data from airports in the world of Los Angeles.

Since at least 2015, the first year for which data is accessible to the public, personal cars have formed the majority of the activity of vehicles at the airport. The share of vehicles which are personal cars increased from around 54% in 2019 to almost 65% in 2020. This proportion has remained relatively stable for most years since then.

Between 2015 and 2016, the volume of carpooling vehicles, including Uber and Lyft, traveling at the airport increased by almost 21,000%.

Last year, Radeshares was the second part – 21% – all vehicle activities at the airport.

Jacob Wasserman, a transporter in transport at the UCLA, said that the new station will not completely change the way people are used to going to the airport.

“I do not think that people’s problems consider driving as the only way to go to the airport will disappear, even with a transit connection,” said Wasserman.

He raised the example of going between Hollywood and the airport, which would involve three different trains and the waiting time in each of the stations.

“If you are new in Los Angeles, you don’t know how to sail in the system, you don’t have a tap card … You will always take an Uber, even if it costs a little more, because of the frustration of this,” said Wasserman.

Additional rail links at the airport, such as those provided for the subsequent phases of the Sepulveda transit corridor, could facilitate the use of the train to travel to and from the airport, he said. These ideas, if they are fully achieved, are still decades, however.

For the moment, it is probably worth trying the train, at least once, just avoid horseshoe.