LAX is overcrowded; Palmdale is not!

Editorial Focus: Plans to spend $12 billion at Los Angeles International Airport to make its horrible congestion problem even worse is beyond belief. Some of that money could much more wisely be spent at Palmdale Regional Airport to relieve the passenger pressures at LAX.

The worst crunch is at the Tom Bradley International Terminal, which was completed just in time to handle the 1984 Olympic crowds. But the terminal was designed for 6.8 million passengers a year and in 1997, about 13 million passengers struggled with their tons and tons of baggage through the Bradley terminal.

There are few horrors in modern travel to compare with handling your heavy luggage and going through customs at LAX after a 14-hour flight from some distant country.

So, now, while the 17,700-acre Palmdale Intercontinental Airport land lies fallow, the powers that be in L.A. are planning to spend a whopping $12 billion to increase LAX passenger capacity by 60% and cargo capacity by 140% by the year 2015.

Passenger traffic at LAX is projected to reach 98 million by that year.

As a stopgap measure, the L.A. Department of Airports commissioners are planning to spend $80 million to expand the Bradley terminal. It's expected that construction would begin in 1999 and be completed by 2001.

At this point, the plans call for about 150,000 square feet of new space to be added in the terminal by excavating below its west end. In other words, it's an underground program that most certainly will have some of the same problems that have plagued L.A.'s multi-billion-dollar subway system which, so far, has gone virtually nowhere.

With $12 billion to spend, the L.A. Department of Airports could develop Palmdale Regional Airport as a major cargo hub with expansive, new aboveground terminals to serve both domestic and international flights. Federal grants could be used to develop a highspeed rail system between San Fernando Valley and Palmdale.

(In the early 1970s, the U.S. Department of Transportation approved a plan to develop a highspeed rail line to link the L.A. Basin and Palmdale.)

One thing that the Antelope Valley has that LAX doesn't have is:

ROOM FOR EXPANSION!

It is patently ridiculous to spend $12 billion at LAX to make a totally intolerable situation even worse - much worse.

To use George Bush's phrase, we earnestly believe that the leadership in Los Angeles lacks the "vision thing." It's time that Mayor Richard Riordan and the L.A. Board of Airport Commissioners wised up!