Airport will expand 'flyaway' shuttle to downtown, Sylmar.

L.A. airport officials are planning a major expansion of the "bus flyaway" system that has long shuttled passengers from Van Nuys to Los Angeles International Airport.

Los Angeles World Airports is in various stages of negotiations to lease tracts of land in Chatsworth, Sylmar, Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, Inglewood and North Long Beach. There's also talk about sites in Norwalk/Santa Fe Springs and Baldwin Park.

The flyaway expansion has become one of the more popular components of Mayor James Hahn's $9.6 billion plan to revamp LAX, although the plan has been in the works for years and is proceeding separately.

The idea is to establish a network of remote locations that make it more convenient for travelers to get in and out of the airport. If successful, flyaways would produce an added benefit of reducing congestion around the airport.

Initially, each facility would allow passengers to park their cars in lots of 500 to 1,200 spaces and then board a bus for LAX. In the future, passengers may be able to check in their baggage and receive boarding passes at these sites.

Using the existing Van Nuys Flyaway as a guide, parking rates in these remote lots would be about $4 a day, with the round trip bus fare of $6 to $7. This would make the bus flyaway competitive with Super Shuttle, limousine services and taxis. Buses would run every 15 to 20 minutes during peak travel times and every 30 minutes during the rest of the day.

"When it comes to either being chauffeured to the airport or battling traffic on the 405, it's a no-brainer," said L.A. City Council President Alex Padilla, who is trying to fast-track the building of a bus flyaway station in his Sylmar district.

Costs in flux

Construction costs have not been fixed, largely because lease negotiations are in flux. LAWA had initially planned to purchase each of the sites, but dropped that idea for cost reasons after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks cut into airport revenues.

Airport officials are spending $30 million to expand and revamp the Van Nuys site, which has been in operation since 1975. They project that improvements to the other sites, including passenger waiting areas, ticketing kiosks, parking lots and concessions, could cost about $10 million apiece.

Timelines will also vary. Some sites, like the one proposed for Union Station, could take advantage of existing facilities and come on line as early as next year. Others may take a year or more to be built after negotiations are concluded.

The new sites would represent the first expansion of the flyaway system since it was established at Van Nuys Airport three decades ago. It took years for that site to gain popularity, although it finally caught on as congestion mounted in the 1980s and 1990s at LAX.

In the late 1990s, LAWA officials commissioned a study of options for adding bus flyaway stops; that study came out in 2000 and recommended the airport purchase a number of sites. With the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks putting the airport in cost-cutting mode, airport officials switched to leasing.

In the meantime, support for additional bus flyaways has picked up, particularly from the business community. In comments released this month on Hahn's airport plan, both the Economic Development Corp. of Los Angeles County and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce urged expansion of the flyaway network.

"We can put this together now, even before the rest of the Master Plan gets under way," said Leron Gubler, president and chief executive of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. Gubler said he would like to see a flyaway in the Hollywood area, although LAWA officials have no plans for one at present.

Flyways are considered a cheaper alternative than building the massive Manchester Square remote check-in facility, as called for in the Hahn plan. But choosing flyaway sites has proven challenging because of the large tracts of land that are necessary. Building multi-level parking structures on smaller parcels is viewed as too costly.

Also, local communities around the sites have expressed concern about increased traffic congestion, particularly at peak travel times.

"The flyaway has the potential to negatively impact traffic and air quality for residents in the immediate vicinity," said Inglewood City Administrator Mark Weinberg. LAWA is in negotiations with the city to place a flyaway on largely city-owned land at the corner of Century Boulevard and Prairie Avenue, next to Hollywood Park.

Offsetting these concerns is the potential for economic development around the sites. "I see this as generating economic development proposals using the consumer traffic brought in by the flyaway," Padilla said.

Much will depend on the specific locations of each bus flyaway station. Like Union Station, the Chatsworth site under negotiation would piggy-back on the existing Metrolink transit station there.

The other locations are not along current mass-transit routes. The Sylmar site would be on former Los Angeles Department of Water & Power property on San Fernando Road east of the Golden State (5) Freeway and south of the Foothill (210) Freeway. The North Long Beach site would be on Southern California Edison property just southwest of the interchange of the Long Beach (710) and Artesia (91) freeways. The Hollywood Park-adjacent site in Inglewood is about one mile north of the Metro Green Line.