A committee assembled by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to promote flights outside of Los Angeles will meet later this month, and there could be an unpleasant item on the agenda: disbanding itself.
The Southern California Regional Airport Authority has been treading water for over a year, accomplishing little, and even some of its members believe it could be killed soon.
“We have to look at if it is even worthwhile to keep it going,” acknowledges Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe, a director on the authority’s board. “Most of the reasons people got involved in this was not to push for more airport traffic, but to prevent additional airport traffic in their backyard. If that’s what’s happening, then I see it going away, probably in the next few months.”
The impotence of the group highlights the problems for so-called regionalization, the oft-touted strategy to relieve passenger-choked Los Angeles International Airport by expanding service at the region’s smaller airports.
More than 60 million passengers used LAX in 2006 a total that towers over the counts of nearby airports. John Wayne Airport in Orange County, Bob Hope Airport in Burbank and Long Beach Airport combined do not get one-third as many travelers as LAX.
And the passenger and cargo count is projected to get higher. Air traffic in the region is expected to surge in the next two decades, reaching 170 million passengers by 2030. But with residents and businesses fed up with the congestion at the airport, there’s a general desire to limit LAX’s growth.
Villaraigosa has pledged to cap LAX’s travelers at 78 million, but the airports in Orange County, Burbank and Long Beach have restrictions on flights, passengers, noise or development, making expansion in the other airports difficult, if not impossible. Bob Hope Airport, for example, has an agreement with the city that prevents any new construction until at least 2015.
“The prospects of redistribution of traffic are not good,” said Jack Keady, a transportation consultant based in Playa del Rey. “Politicians are well-intentioned but underestimate the requirements for redistribution of traffic to any significant extent.”
Waning interest
To promote regionalization, Villaraigosa in 2006 revived the Southern California Regional Airport Authority, which had dissolved in 2003 due to inactivity.
But the committee has plodded along, meeting just once in the last 10 months, leading some to wonder if it will last much longer. The authority hopes to meet Jan. 31, but the agenda has not been set.
Besides Knabe, there are only two active voting members on the authority’s board: Los Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, the board’s chair, and Gary Ovitt, a supervisor in San Bernardino County.
Originally billed as a joint powers agreement between Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange Counties, the authority has been rejected by the latter two entities.
Riverside County Supervisor Bob Buster is still listed as a member on the authority’s Web site, though he has stopped attending the meetings over concerns about the possibility of bringing commercial air traffic to March Air Reserve Base. He called the committee “L.A.-centric” and said he does not want Riverside County to get pushed around.
“If regionalization means they’ll spread their pain somewhere else and dominate them politically, that’s not my idea of regionalization,” said Buster, who does not even know if he is still a member of the authority.
Orange County officials, meanwhile, declined to join the committee over similar concerns about increasing air traffic at John Wayne Airport.
“I just think it’s childish,” Knabe said. “They should be sitting at the table.”
Villaraigosa could not be reached for comment.
Tipping point
Rosendahl remains optimistic about the committee’s work. Whether politicians want new flights or not, he said, something needs to be done about the overwhelming traffic around LAX and throughout the region.
“The tipping point has been reached by the people regarding the gridlock,” he said. “I don’t care if you’re in Orange County or Riverside, you’re in the same gridlock.”
Rosendahl is now focusing his efforts on bringing new service to L.A./Ontario International Airport and L.A./Palmdale Regional Airport, both operated by Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), the same city agency that operates LAX.
Airport officials have touted new service by UAL Corp.’s United Express airline between Palmdale and San Francisco as a win for the regionalization movement.
The airline operates twice-daily flights on 50-seat planes and officials boast that it has served about 12,000 passengers since starting service June 7. But on average each flight is only about one-third full.
More than 50 miles from downtown Los Angeles, the tiny airport has struggled unsuccessfully for years to maintain viable passenger service. With local and federal subsidies, the airport tried again in 2007, signing an 18-month agreement with United. But the airport, along with the city of Palmdale, had to offer United more than $2 million in annual revenue guarantees in order reach the agreement.
Though the initial response has been cool, airport officials have said they expect the flights to be at least half full by this summer. New airline service, they say, typically takes some time before it catches on.
“The service is on track for a new startup,” said Palmdale spokesman Harold Johnson. “Between June 7 and the (end of the) 18-month period we want to get the passengers up to where United would be making a profit.”
Small victories
While Palmdale struggles to find its footing, Ontario is seeing some growth, and regionalization proponents point to the Inland Empire airport as the best hope for the movement though much of that growth is due to the huge amount of commercial development in the area over the past decade.
A big victory came last week, Rosendahl said, when executives from Annapolis, Md.-based airport developer Aeroterm LLC announced an air cargo facility they are building in Ontario will divert 6,000 flights from LAX each year, about 1 percent of its annual total. The Los Angeles City Council last month approved a 40-year lease agreement with the company for the Ontario site.
In addition to the cargo facility, the airport has added a number of daily flights in recent years, pushing annual passenger totals over 7 million. To help matters, city officials in Ontario want airport expansion, unlike in many other parts of the region.
At a recent press conference in City Hall, Villaraigosa said Ontario’s passenger totals could rise substantially as a result of regionalization: “We hope to see it grow to 30 million a year to take some of the traffic from LAX.”
Villaraigosa is expected later this year to announce plans to build several new terminals at Ontario in order to accommodate such an increase in travelers. Nevertheless, getting people to choose Ontario over LAX, when LAX often offers flights at competitive or lower prices, remains a challenge
“LAWA has built a nice facility in Ontario and they have been reasonably zealous in pursuing new airlines. However, it’s a tough job to get people to use Ontario,” said Keady, the transportation consultant. “Ontario, although it is a fine airport, doesn’t have many nonstops to the East Coast, does not have widebodies, does not have international air service.”
