The debate over parking congestion at LAX is heating up in court. The Parking Spot, a shuttle service that allows residents to park at a nearby lot and shuttle into the airport, has filed a legal challenge to the Los Angeles World Airport's Environmental Impact Report, which was conducted as part of the Landside Access Modernization Plan to reduce airport congestion. The traffic report analyzed a reduction of airport traffic based on the elimination of shuttle services, like the parking spot, but neglected to analyze traffic patterns if ride sharing services like Uber and Lyft were disallowed from accessing the terminals. If the Parking Spot wins, the legal challenge would require that the airport analyze traffic congestion under both scenarios so that an informed future decision. As of now, there has been no official decision about terminal access. To learn more about the legal challenge, we sat down with Benjamin M. Reznik, the lead lawyer in the challenge, for an exclusive interview.
GlobeSt.com: Why do you feel that the traffic report conducted by the airport board is incomplete or unfair?
Benjamin M. Reznik: LAMP is focused on reducing congestion at the airport. Over the last few years, the airport board conducted an traffic study based on keeping out all commercial shuttles, that includes parking shuttles, hotel shuttles and rental car shuttles, and letting in all of the single-passenger vehicles, like Uber and Lyft. The airport board concluded that they could reduce traffic congestion by 40% based on this analysis. We submitted comments saying that the airport board should study the flip side, which is allowing commercial shuttles but keeping out single-passenger vehicles and instead send them over to the ITS intermodal transit facility. The airport board did not want to do that, and we ended up with a final EIR report that concludes that if you keep out commercial shuttles, you will reduce traffic by 40%. We don't know what the alternative analysis would have shown.
GlobeSt.com: Did the airport board give you a formal reason as to why they would not conduct a traffic survey based on keeping commercial shuttles?
Reznik: We met with the airport board, and asked them to study the alternative. Their response was that they aren't deciding who gets access to the central terminal area, and that will be decided in the future. Our argument then was that the future decision makers aren't going to have the proper information.
GlobeSt.com: With now decision made, why did you feel a legal challenge was appropriate now?
Reznik: Ultimately when the airport board certified the EIR, that triggered a 30 day statute of limitations to file a legal challenge. The lawsuit will not force the board into a decision. It says that the studies done are inadequate and incomplete. As a result, they are creating negative impact on a lot of people, namely Los Angeles residents. If you think about who uses the facilities around the airport, it is only the local residents. Travelers and business users go to a hotel and rental car facilities. We don't know what the airport is going to do, but in order to maintain our legal right to question it, the lawsuit had to be filed. Hopefully, the airport will expand on the study and look at the alternatives so that when they make a decision on which vehicles get access to the airport, it will be an informed decision. We are hoping that allowing commercial shuttles actually helps reduce congestion and support a local population. They have a duty to the traveling public to do a full analysis. That is what EIRs are about; they are about looking at options and analyzing their impacts.
GlobeSt.com: Do you think this current report favored ride-sharing services specifically?
Reznik: Uber and Lyft were just granted access to the airport in the last year, and they are now dominating the airport traffic. Statistic show that they are the largest number of vehicles going through the airport. When you combine that with the existing traffic and single-passenger vehicles, it is a mess. However, it seemed that the study favored them. Before we filed the lawsuit, there was a quote from the head of the airport board, Sean O. Burton in the Planning Report, and he says that he decided that they are going to reduce congestion by keeping out the shuttles. Based on that, we believe that they have made a decision.
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Kelsi Maree Borland
