A $9 billion LAX: to be or not to be

[question everything]

LOS ANGELES -- Troubled by violence and terrorist threats, Los Angeles International Airport has announced a $9 billion plan to transform itself into what the city's mayor contends would be the nation's highest-security airport.

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Most controversial for this vehicle-obsessed city, travelers would no longer be allowed curbside pickup and drop-off at the terminal. Instead, they would be let off a mile from the airport, where they would go through security screening and then hop aboard a "people mover" train to their gates.

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With hopes of starting construction early next year, the airport first needs key approvals this fall from the city council, which has been skeptical of the plan, and from the Federal Aviation Administration.

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While there is wide agreement that security at Los Angeles International needs improvement, the mayor's plan has sparked intense debate over the kind of security that would best serve the flying public. Airline lobbyists oppose the plan. Security consultants can't agree whether it significantly improves security or not. City council members and local congressional representatives say the proposal focuses too much on a bombing threat to the detriment of other security enhancements.

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Rand concluded in its report that terrorists would be more interested in attacking airplanes, either on the ground or in the air, than in blowing up an airport terminal. The consultants' analysis includes statistical calculations of how many people would be killed by a bomb, depending on whether it explodes at a terminal curb, at a security checkpoint or on an aircraft. The conclusion: death and destruction -- and overall impact -- would be far greater in an attack aboard an airplane than at the airport.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62790-2004Apr8.html

[question everything]

1. Or... Hahn's cockamamie LAX plan is dead - LA Daily News Editorial

http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20951~2071716,00.html#

Apparently Mayor James Hahn's office in Los Angeles City Hall is hermetically sealed -- nothing enters, and nothing leaves. It's a protected lair, utterly detached from reality, where no one reads the papers or watches the news. And the mayor's guard dog makes sure nothing gets past him.

How else can one explain Hahn's quixotic obsession with his plan to spend a whopping $9.1 billion "modernizing" Los Angeles International Airport?

The plan is dead.

Finished.


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If that weren't bad enough, the mayor of El Segundo, who initially endorsed the plan, changed his mind. After reading the fine print, he realized that it was just another attempt at LAX expansion, which would wreak havoc on traffic in the local community and on the 405 Freeway.

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With the bullying Stein out of the way, the feeding frenzy is on. Elected officials, the business community, airlines, citizen groups -- everyone except the unions -- are condemning the plan and calling for sensible and affordable measures to make flying safer and more convenient.

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[boobooday]

2. Then how do they protect the "people movers?"

I wonder.

http://www.wgoeshome.com