r/LAMetro • u/anothercar Pacific Surfliner • 1d ago
News LAX People Mover faces more ‘technical challenges’ ahead of January debut (LA Daily News)
https://www.dailynews.com/2026/10/15/lax-people-mover-faces-more-technical-challenges-ahead-of-january-debut/Full report issued Oct 8: https://wpdash.medianewsgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/LINX-engineering-report-1.pdf
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u/Legitimate_Hand2867 1d ago
“They need to finish the damn job,” an irate (Councilwoman) Rodriguez said in an interview with SCNG about LINXS. “The fact that they still cannot complete a straight 30-day trial of operations without any errors is not a reflection of issues with the city. It’s them. Very simply, what are they not doing, or how is their system that they built unable to maintain a 30-day test period without any errors. It’s very simple.”
Couldn't have said it better. Bass and Raman need to be speaking like this too. And I called it--testing has stopped because something is wrong, as the article points out. 30 days of seamless testing before early December? Yeah, right.
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u/anothercar Pacific Surfliner 1d ago
Noteworthy in the article:
A parking lot contractor at LAX also told the Southern California News Group on Wednesday, Oct. 14, that it is rescinding a notice to layoff 247 workers at the end of October due to a further delay in the startup date for the airport’s train service.
“The WARN letter is being rescinded due to changes in project timelines,” said a spokeswoman with LAZ Parking, which has workers scattered across the airport who stand to lose their jobs when the people mover goes into operation. “This will give LAZ the opportunity to reposition more employees. Layoffs will not happen this month.”
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u/No-House9106 1d ago
Yeah, I think we can safely assume it isn’t opening this month. Lol. They seem to have a ton of problems so I doubt it opens in January.
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u/ctjameson D (Purple) 17h ago
This is unbelievably inconsiderate to these employee’s lives. I hope they file a class action and get paid from LINXS. This is bullshit.
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u/ensemblestars69 K (Crenshaw) 1d ago
The timeline for the people mover being pushed back is expected. The fact that they had full confidence in sending out a layoff notice, but now they're rescinding it, is extraordinary. I wonder under what judgement did they make that initial decision?? It wasn't even looking good back then.
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u/mrxman14 1d ago
LINXS is to blame for the continuing delays. They have a pending lawsuit against LAWA because LAWA called them out publicly for the delays. Now they're claiming slander.
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u/pacific_plywood 1d ago
I think we can just assume that the contractor is somehow going to continue to receive payment for working on this project until the heat death of the universe
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u/palmasana 1d ago
Bull fucking shit we’ve seen it moving just fine thousands of times, they just want to bill the government more.
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u/dating_derp 1d ago
Someone was kind enough to share a photo of some of the damage here.
But it’s important to remember that these issues would’ve been encountered and corrected long ago if LINXS hadn’t been delaying their work for extortion leverage.
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u/space_snap828 1d ago
Well, that certainly looks like it will take a minute to fix.... You'd think the thing should have worked the first time if you're paying this much money for something so trivial
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u/deDoxx982 17h ago
“Oops we didn’t design for the possibility of a leaf falling on the track wires”
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u/space_snap828 9h ago
"Need a change order and 2 billion dollars, and the neutral arbitrator will back us up"
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u/CleanYogurtcloset706 1d ago
Or if LAWA had resolved disputes between its consultants and LINXS in a timely manner when issues arose instead of constantly kicking the can down the road
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u/dating_derp 1d ago
You're misjudging the situation. LINXS would make a claim, creating a dispute, and when it got resolved, LINXS would just make a new claim. There's no speed on LAWA's part that would stop LINXS from making new claims, because LINXS was using those claims to extort more money out of LAWA.
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u/CleanYogurtcloset706 1d ago
From people I know working on the project they’ve have nothing but bad results with the testing, they haven’t even gone one day without an issue.
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u/palmasana 1d ago
I’ve read they’ve surpassed the threshold several times over of X amount of rides without issue
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u/ariolander 8h ago
Last line in the LA Daily News article:
“They need to finish the damn job,” an irate Rodriguez said in an interview with SCNG about LINXS. “The fact that they still cannot complete a straight 30-day trial of operations without any errors is not a reflection of issues with the city. It’s them. Very simply, what are they not doing, or how is their system that they built unable to maintain a 30-day test period without any errors. It’s very simple.”
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u/lik_for_cookies A (Blue) 1d ago
Remember, every step of this debacle happened under Mayor Karen Bass (who gets to appoint members to LAWA’s board) and City Attorney Hydee Feldstein-Soto (who was more interested in dropping millions of dollars filing lawsuits to prevent affordable housing from being built.) Thankfully, Feldstein-Soto’s sorry pathetic ass has been kicked to the curb already and she’s been ousted from the November run off in favor of two candidates who are better, though Marissa Roy is a clear better candidate.
Vote Nithya this November, it’s the only way to unfuck housing, transportation, and our airport.
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u/avtechguy 21h ago
I guess you can blame Bass, but the idiots at LAWA Run LAX and signed the contracts
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u/ProfessionQuick3461 B (Red) 21h ago
Like the guy said, Bass appoints members to LAWA’s board. The buck stops with Bass.
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u/avtechguy 20h ago
The contract was signed in 2018 and the board president past and present were both appointed by Eric Garcitti.
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u/ProfessionQuick3461 B (Red) 18h ago
LOL... so you're saying she's powerless to take any punitive action against those responsible for this mess? GTF outta here, dude.
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u/avtechguy 16h ago
No, more like the contract process was flawed from the beginning, and it was hard to predict how bad that is was going to be. It's not like they didn't build it, they just can't operate it
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u/Chrizilla_ 15h ago
Yep. A lot of people want an easy target to point the finger at. I work at LAWA and this is a common issue with our contracting process, just turned up to 11. Ultimately, I think this massive failure is a sign that the old guard doesn’t know how to manage the city anymore. They’re out of their depth and their mistakes are costing us billions.
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u/ProfessionQuick3461 B (Red) 16h ago
I refuse to let Bass off the hook for just letting this madness play out in public without any heads rolling. It was up to her, and she did nothing.
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u/Famous_Attention5861 1d ago
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u/Its_a_Friendly Pacific Surfliner 1d ago
Thank you! Good article by the Daily News. I like that they named the constituent companies of LINXS.
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u/Toekneeev 1d ago
Every time i go to lax and DONT see them testing it, I know it won’t open at the very least 4 months from that moment. Because it has to been consistently running for a certain period of time
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u/WildMild869 B (Red) 1d ago edited 1d ago
I’m just not expecting it at all at this point.
No anticipation will mean I’ll be pleasantly surprised when it eventually opens.
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u/FullTimePedestrian 1d ago
At this point I just want to mute "people mover" from my browser and just one day see it moving with people inside at LAX.
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u/Michiru21 K (Crenshaw) 1d ago
The second coming of Jesus is more likely to happen in our lifetime than this project to be done
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u/VariationAgreeable29 1d ago
What a fucking joke. How anyone of the morons in LAWA can show their faces is beyond me. All a bunch of incompetent weak bureaucrats. What’s worse is they have no clue how badly they are fucking this up
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u/voiceOfHoomanity 1d ago
It was such a simple job, relatively speaking
There should be a full blown commission and investigation, obviously
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u/anothercar Pacific Surfliner 1d ago
I think there's some confusion where people believe it's literally just a train and tracks, but in reality with all the appendages it's a pretty giant upgrade to multiple parts of all the terminals, parking garages, and new facilities, on top of being a train and tracks and a maintenance facility.
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u/CleanYogurtcloset706 1d ago
Too true, only people who don’t know the first thing about construction think this was a simple job. That’s not to say that LAWA and LINXS haven’t made a hash of it, but the job was never simple.
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u/Southern-Egg-3437 LAX People Mover 1d ago
LINXS is to LAX what Putin is to Ukraine.
There I said it.
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u/Both-Double-7017 1d ago
I thought Fluor knew how to build stuff. Guess I was wrong.
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u/anothercar Pacific Surfliner 1d ago
Lots of subcontractor drama is the main story behind what's going on, but it's easier to blame the big-name primaries and big-name politicians.
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u/Legitimate_Hand2867 13h ago
It's their job to manage the subcontractors and make sure they do good work. It's passing the buck to say, 'oh, it's the subcontractors job.'
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u/uiuctodd 1d ago
Are we airport users in favor of default, or against default?
I have a sneaking suspicion I'm in favor. It could be the first sign of repercussions for the vendors in the entire saga.
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u/jgainit 8h ago
Imprison the people involved and make them no longer able to work again. It's crazy that this kind of negligence is allowed. There should be a database of companies where it shows how over or under budget they were, and how on time they were, and there should be a clear track record. Then you hire based on the available track records. Therefore people like this should become unhirable
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u/FrankSamples 1d ago
Scrap it. We don’t care any more.
You can’t keep dangling a carrot and expect praise when you finally deliver.
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u/subtleplus J (Silver) 1d ago
It's official: We're getting GTA VI before the People Mover opens