Angelenos must visit Palmdale Airport

Editorial Focus: The hierarchy of the city of Los Angeles must be invited to visit Palmdale to prove how accessible our local airport is to millions who live in the northern part of L.A. County. Waiting another 20 years to develop a high-speed rail line or the Avenue P-8 traffic artery should not even figure in the equation.

Foes of the LAX expansion - particularly Ruth Galanter, the L.A. city councilwoman whose district will be adversely affected by additional flights and ground traffic - are pointing toward Palmdale as a far better solution to handle air passenger and cargo growth.

Galanter is lobbying for a highspeed rail line to connect the L.A. basin with Palmdale. That has long been recognized as an ideal solution to what Angelenos perceive as the "remoteness" of Palmdale.

In the early 1970s, shortly after the Palmdale Intercontinental Airport was conceived, there was an attempt to obtain federal funding for such a rail line, but as changes occurred in the U.S. Department of Transportation hierarchy the dream faded.

As we pointed out in a recent editorial, Palmdale is far more accessible than LAX by car or bus for residents of the San Fernando, San Gabriel and Santa Clarita valleys.

The dreaded Sepulveda Pass - always choked with traffic and now worse since the opening of the huge Getty Museum - provides a horrific bottleneck. Indeed, traffic is usually bumper-to-bumper all the way the LAX.

The city of Palmdale is waiting for Caltrans to develop the Avenue P-8 overpass, which is expected sometime in the next century to provide an extended roadway to the airport.

BUT NOW READ THIS: IT WILL TAKE 15 TO 20 YEARS BEFORE EITHER A HIGHSPEED RAIL LINE OR THE AVENUE P-8 ROUTE CAN BECOME OPERATIONAL.

By that time, LAX will become a worse quagmire than it is today, both in terms of ground access and flight safety.

What's needed today is for the mayors of Palmdale and Lancaster, Jim Ledford and Frank Roberts, and L.A. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich to invite L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan, the entire L.A. council and the entire Department of Airports Commission to visit Palmdale on a chartered bus so that they can see first-hand how accessible the local airport is.

This June will mark the 30th anniversary of the announcement of the Palmdale Intercontinental Airport.

We've waited long enough. It's absolutely essential to the welfare of Southern California's millions of airline passengers that real progress be made in Palmdale.