Gerardo Ramirez flew into Los Angeles from Mexico City on Thursday and was surprised to learn that he couldn’t easily access a rail line from the main airport of a major city — something he’s come to expect in his travels. “I’ve been in many cities around the world, where public transportation is well connected,” said Ramirez, 24. “It’s my first time here in L.
A., and I don’t know why I can’t find public transit to connect me to a train.” This has been the city’s transit riddle for decades.
In the 1970s, as L.A. County’s population boomed and its traffic became infamous, civic leaders began pushing for a light rail system to connect the sprawling region.
With ever more passengers pouring through Los Angeles International Airport, planners saw it as an obvious destination as workers broke ground for the first line — the Blue Line between Long Beach and downtown — in 1985. Nearly 40 years later, as hundreds of thousands of residents and tourists spill onto 1 World Way each week, rail still has not made it to one of the busiest airports in the world. You can take a Metro train to North Hollywood or Santa Monica or El Segundo or Azusa.
Just not to LAX. City officials and transit experts have long called this an embarrassing misstep. But now that elusive air-rail link is almost here.
After the long-awaited Automated People Mover train opens in 2026, it will connect LAX to the Metro rail system from the K Line and the C Line. “For this particular pla.