Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) announced that it will pilot two additional taxi pickup locations for guests arriving at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to begin later this month. The two new pilot locations will augment taxi pickups at LAX-it, which will remain the primary pickup location for taxis and ride app vehicles.
The two new locations for taxi pickups are:
- Parking Structure 3: This location will serve guests of Tom Bradley International Terminal and Terminal 3. The pickup location will be the lane closest to Tom Bradley International Terminal on the ground floor of Parking Structure 3. Passenger queuing will occur on the curb nearest the taxi lanes.
- Terminal 7/8: A taxi stand will be brought back to the previous location on the Lower/Arrivals level of the Central Terminal Area (CTA), past the last entrance to T7/8. This location will serve guests arriving at Terminals 7 and 8, and queueing will be on the curb by the taxi stand. This location is past where buses and shuttles exit the inner lanes and provides a separate entrance for vehicles.
Guests arriving at terminals 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6, will continue to walk or take a fast and free shuttle to LAX-it to find their taxi pickups. Furthermore, because space for both taxis and pedestrians at the two new pickup locations is limited, guests arriving at Tom Bradley and Terminals 3, 7, and 8 during high-volume times are still encouraged to walk or take the shuttle to LAX-it for the quickest departure from LAX. LAX-it, the taxi and ride app pickup area that debuted in late October 2019, has been running smoothly for more than four months after some challenges in its first week of implementation. Shuttle rides to LAX-it are consistently under 15 minutes from all terminals, with buses arriving every 5 minutes. Once arriving at LAX-it, guests typically wait less than 10 minutes – and frequently not at all – for their taxi or ride app pickup.
LAX-it was implemented as a traffic mitigation strategy during a period of extremely heavy construction on LAX’s Automated People Mover train and stations, and redevelopment of every single terminal. That construction has led to the closure of 30 percent of the inner curb lanes, internal roads within LAX’s Central Terminal Area (CTA), and cranes, heavy equipment, and construction crews throughout the CTA. LAWA’s projections indicated that, without significant mitigations, traffic at LAX and backing up into surrounding communities would be worse on the average summer day than on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. As a result of LAX-it, the number of vehicles in the CTA has decreased by an average of 12-13 percent each day.
Critical to the success of LAX-it has been the high occupancy bus and shuttle system now operating on the inner curb lanes of the CTA’s lower level. Those lanes have been closed to all single-use vehicles, allowing high-occupancy vehicles to move more freely. In addition to the LAX-it shuttles, FlyAway buses, the G shuttle to the Metro Green Line, the shuttle to the City Bus Center, Buses to Economy Parking Lot E, Employee Shuttles, and the LAX Inter-Terminal Connector currently use the inner lanes. LAWA is also planning to introduce additional high-occupancy modes into those lanes going forward. The only non-high-occupancy mode permitted to pick up from those inner lanes is LA Access Taxis. The Terminal 7/8 taxi pickup location is past where buses exit the inner lanes of the CTA, and the Parking Structure 3 pickup location also does not require the use of these lanes, which is why the two locations were chosen in collaboration with the taxi industry.
The pilot program is expected to run for 90 days, during which LAWA will evaluate the impact on traffic in the CTA and surrounding communities and the ability to control pedestrian traffic and queuing.
