Los Angeles World Airports took another step toward locking the city into a decade of construction and congestion at LAX. Thursday, the LAWA board voted unanimously to approve more than a billion dollars for a sweeping roadway expansion that critics have warned will worsen traffic, undermine transit investments, and move the city backward at a time when officials claim to be prioritizing climate action. The new project would add or rebuild roughly 4.4 miles of elevated roads and ramps leading into LAX. LAWA argues this will separate airport traffic from local streets and improve efficiency. Yet even the agency’s own environmental documents acknowledge that the project will induce additional vehicle miles traveled and cause impacts that cannot be mitigated. These warnings stand in direct conflict with the idea that widening access roads is a viable solution to gridlock.

The approval also comes at a time when LAX’s own passenger forecasts have dropped sharply. The airport had been planning for 110 million annual travelers. That number has now been revised down to 90 million. The terminals that originally justified this roadway expansion have been canceled. Concourse 0 and Terminal 9 were both scrapped after new projections showed they were no longer needed. Despite this, the roadway plan continues unchanged. As one local transportation analyst noted in a recent video, the project has taken on the character of a zombie plan carried along by bureaucracy rather than necessity.

The timeline raises its own set of concerns. LAWA insists parts of the road network will be ready before the 2028 Olympics, but even its own documents acknowledge that large portions of the project will not be complete until 2030. That means the years leading up to the World Cup and the Olympics, some of the highest pressure events in the city’s modern history, will overlap directly with major construction at the front door of the airport. Residents in Westchester and surrounding neighborhoods are already bracing for long delays, detours, and years of noise and disruption.

There are also questions about whether LAWA can deliver the project on time or on budget. One of the contractors selected for the roadway expansion is the same firm involved in the People Mover project, which is now three years late and hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. The People Mover was supposed to be the backbone of LAX’s new transit-first vision, connecting Metro lines directly to the terminals. Its delay has already weakened public confidence, and handing the same contractor another major project has raised concerns about oversight and accountability.

The roadway plan also repeats a familiar pattern. Los Angeles widened the 405 a decade ago with promises that it would ease congestion. The result was more traffic, not less. Transportation experts have been warning for years that expanding road capacity only encourages more driving. In this case, LAWA’s own studies confirm that outcome. These same experts argue that the funds now committed to elevated roads could instead expand transit service to the airport, including more frequent FlyAway buses, improved Metro connections, and safer options for people walking or biking to work.

Despite the board’s vote, opponents of the LAX pressway are continuing to push for a pause. Their argument is simple. Finish the People Mover. Open the new Metro station. See how many travelers still need to drive once the new transit links are fully operational. Then use real data, not outdated projections, to decide whether a major road expansion makes sense. This approach would align with the city’s climate goals while avoiding another costly construction misstep.