The Los Angeles World Airports Board of Commissions voted on Thursday to spend $1.5 billion on a new road into the airport.
The LAX People Mover is estimated to cost $1.5 billion per mile (that’s building it, not including operating costs).
- Phoenix airport’s Sky Train Stage 2 comes in at $300 million per mile.
- Orlando’s South People Mover clocks in at $340 million per mile.
Since this is just a road LAX ges 4.4 miles for the $1.5 billion price. But Orlando might that distance of a people mover not just a road.
At $341 million per mile of road (for structures, ramps, demolition, utilities, landscaping, etc.) this seems like 2–5× what you’d expect in a normal U.S. city for this kind of road work. And U.S. work is more expensive than global norms.
- Compass International gives elevated major freeway, 4 lanes, urban U.S. at about $68 – 71 million per mile.
- The Federal Highway Administration suggests urban freeway lanes cost around $8 to 15 million per lane-mile, so a 4-lane facility is on the order of $30 to 60 million per mile for non-elevated work.
That triangulates around $60 to $70 million per mile. Let’s add in recent construction inflation, and add a premium for airport work, so double it and you’re looking at $140 million per mile, or $616 million total. LAX is spending $1.5 billion. Nashville airport just spent $137 million on their roadway project.
To be fair, projects at a live airport are hard. They involve constant phasing and strict safety and access controls.
Add in a long, litigation-prone environmental process under the National Environmental Policy Act and California Environmental Quality Act, which create veto points and leverage for myriad agencies and community groups and endless design studies and re-studies; layered agency involvement (LAWA, City, County, Metro, Caltrans, FAA, TSA, CBP, utilities); significant “mitigation” and community-benefit obligations (noise walls, aesthetic treatments, workforce agreements, local hire, disadvantaged business goals); and high local construction wages union agreements and you get LAX costs.
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