VOICES - As a resident of Westchester, I can understand the fear behind this fight very well and I have full appreciation for the call to "regionalize" our air traffic as a counter to moving the runways.
On the surface, spreading air traffic of commercial freight away from LAX and out to Ontario and Palmdale might sound like a nice solution that spares my neighborhood the hassle that years of construction would bring. So I get it that a regionalization bandwagon has been created.
But moving that freight out of LAX would mean that the families in Westchester who have built their lives upon the importing and exporting of commercial goods would lose that livelihood.
These are very real consequences for very real people who raise their families here, support their schools with their flexible schedules, and are actively engaged parents living an idealized life of the small business owner with the ability to provide our community with real value.
Beyond that, it’s more environmentally sound to utilize the rail base we have in LA and the upcoming rail center in San Pedro to ship commercial freight out to greater America than it is to truck it out of Ontario.
For the record, I don't support extending the runways before we modernize the existing infrastructure. The terminals are dilapidated, inefficient, and run on archaic technology. Pouring a bunch of money into a reconfiguration of the runways won’t pay off until the modernization efforts occur.
I am on the same side as the people arguing for regionalization. I just think that using regionalization to fight the runways is about as unwise and ineffective as it is to employ scare tactics about the constant "Carmageddon" that “will” happen because of runway construction. It makes us sound like NIMBYs and no one takes us seriously.
And that’s a shame because those arguments obscure the real danger behind the airport’s plan.
The reality is that the airport wants to move the runways 260 ft because they want to increase the number of gates they have when the gate cap is lifted in 2020. It's obvious that LAWA is not actually trying to make the airport safer with the new runway configuration. They want to increase the air traffic in 2020 and make more money. End of story.
The problem is financial. What if we allow the airport to move the runways? It would require that they issue billions in bonds to fund the reconfiguration of the runways followed by an increase in the number of gates. What if the future passenger base isn’t there to support the increased air traffic?
Then we've issues billions of dollars in bonds at a loss.
But we aren’t having that conversation, because we as a neighborhood and a city aren’t demanding it. Instead, we let our elected representatives “fight” this losing regionalization fight – something they are more than happy to do because it allows them to provide us with the lip service that they are fulfilling campaign promises while they sit there and let the airport to do whatever it wants. When it's all said and done, they can say they "tried" to follow through on a campaign promise to fight for Westchester.
But for my money and my family, that impotent fight means nothing. We need to have a frank conversation about why the airport really wants to move the runways and we need someone with leadership to spearhead it.
(Odysseus Bostick is an 8th grade science teacher and father to 3 little girls. He also serves on the board of the Westchester Neighbors Association and is a candidate for Los Angeles City Council in District 11. This blog was posted first at Venice.Patch.com)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 11 Issue 31
Pub: Apr 16, 2013