Since 1995 the closest (about 2 miles) LAX has been to rail service is the Green Line Station at Aviation Blvd and Imperial Highway. That will change in 2022 when there will be a joint Crenshaw/LAX and Green Lines Station with connections to the LAX People Mover which will be a mile closer to the LAX Terminals.Instead of a 2 mile bus ride mixed in heavy airport traffic, the People Mover will run straight to the airport. There will be moving sidewalks to help connect passengers to the terminals from the 3 People Mover terminal stations. The Crenshaw/LAX Line will be running by 2019. The new station that the Green and Crenshaw/LAX lines will share at Century Blvd. will likely have shuttle bus service to the airport until the opening of the joint Metrorail/People mover station is ready by 2022.
How big of an impact will this new LAX rail service have at the airport? It won’t offer direct service to downtown Los Angeles. Many of the people who fly out of LAX live and or work along the coast near the 405 freeway. There is little in the way of connections by rail to this corridor. The 405 freeway (as well as the 105) is often congested around LAX. Much more is needed to carry passengers to LAX with rail than the combined Green and Crenshaw/LAX light rail lines.
Ideally the Green Line should be connected to the Blue Line for direct service to downtown Los Angeles and Union Station. The same is true for the Crenshaw/LAX Line to the Expo Line to West LA and San Monica. Building such connections now won’t be cheap. Also adding more trains, particularly on the Blue Line will be difficult. Both the Blue and Expo Lines have many grade crossings that limit the number of trains it can run without disrupting road traffic. Extensive grade separation would allow many more trains from 2 lines to run on theses routes. What is also needed is rail transit on the 405 corridor between Van Nuys and LAX to link with the Green Line, Crenshaw/LAX, Expo, extended Purple Line at Westwood, the Orange Line Busway (which needs to be rebuilt for rail) and the Van Nuys Amtrak/Metrolink Station.
Ideally the Green Line should be extended 2 miles east to the Metrolink Norwalk/Santa Fe Springs Station. This station is a strong candidate for a future High Speed Rail station as HSR is extended to Anaheim by 2029. Norwalk is closer for passengers from Orange and Riverside Counties to LAX and much of West Los Angeles than connecting at Los Angeles Union Station. As of now for a Metrolink passenger trying to get from Norwalk to LAX they must first transfer to a Norwalk Transit bus (which accepts Metrolink tickets as a transfer) to the Norwalk Green Line terminal This can easily take 40 to 50 minutes since the bus schedules are not timed to meet with the trains. Once on the Green Line it is another 30 minutes to the Aviation Green Line station for a transfer to a shuttle bus to the terminals. It takes well over an hour now to get from Metrolink at Norwalk/ Santa Fe Springs to LAX. Needless to say not many people ride Metrolink to get to LAX. But there is a simple way to improve on this and increase Metrolink ridership.
A shuttle bus can quickly and for little capital expense be run between Metrolink and the LAX area using the HOV lanes on the 105 freeway. The buses can be scheduled to be standing by for each train to carry passengers west. and bring them east on their return trip. Adding a few stops along the way will increase ridership for these buses. Such stops could be for connections to the Green Line as well as the Blue Line at the Willowbrook/Rosa Park station, to the Sliver Line Rapid Bus on the Harbor Freeway HOV lanes and at the Green Line station at Aviation. For connections to the terminals this bus service could go to the LAX City Bus Center which has shuttle bus service and is closer to the terminals than the bus shuttle at the Aviation Green Line station. This bus could also be extended to connect with the Expo Line at Culver City and even Westwood and UCLA.
Most express services have trouble gaining ridership because they serve too few markets. This was one of the problems with the short lived Flyway bus at the Irvine Transportation Center which went directly to the LAX terminals. There were limited frequencies for this service and the bus only went to LAX. That is understandable considering the service was funded by the airport. If ridership supports it, it would be possible to run limited and all stop buses for people just going to the terminals and other going to the Westside. But first we need to start with a decent connecting service.There is no way to know when if ever the Green Line will be extended to Metrolink. Bus service can be in place long before such an extension is built. By 2022 these buses can serve the joint Metrorail/LAX People Mover station for passengers headed to LAX’s terminals.
Just this starter bus connection to the LAX area and Westside LA will increase ridership for Metrolink and the transit services these buses will connect to. The existing connections at the Norwalk/Santa Fe Springs station are too slow and inconvenient for most people to bother with. Connecting bus services will open new, underserved markets for Metrolink. The LAX connecting bus can be a prototype for more connections for Metrolink. Bus service from the San Fernando Valley to Westwood and LAX are also worth looking into. Metrolink bus connections from Riverside to Palm Springs, additional service on the Venture Metrolink Line, connecting buses to San Diego County to Metrolink trains terminating in southern Orange County are just some of the possibilities.There are many markets underserved by rail than can be with decent bus connections.