Rain, Flooding Cause Traffic Delays In And Around LAX

November 20, 2011 11:01 PM

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Airport, Century Boulevard, Delays, Flooding, LAX, Rain, Sepulveda, Storms, traffic, weather

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LOS ANGELES (CBS) — Heavy rains and flooding in and around Los Angeles International Airport Sunday were responsible for major delays for motorists trying to get in or out of the airport.

An airport official said commuters were delayed as much as an hour trying to navigate to the airport’s arrivals and departures gates.

Flooding in the south side of the Sepulveda Boulevard tunnel just after 2 p.m. left about three to four feet of standing water in the tunnel making it impassible, according to Nancy Castles of the Los Angeles World Airports.

Around 8 p.m. city maintenance crews were able to start pumping most of the water out.

Castles said the clean-up effort was on going with a goal of making the area flood-free around 11 p.m. Sunday.

Castles advised motorists to add an extra 45 minutes to one hour to travel times as all other routes, including Century Boulevard, were trying to handle the overflow traffic.

Rain, Flooding Cause Traffic Delays In And Around LAX

Todd Mannix

What this story does not tell you is that while it is understandable that the rain caused some delays, LAX completely mishandled this incident. it’s an old tunnel. it floods. It’s Thanksgiving, its busy. Airport management should have been on this before the problem started. What’s worse is that instead of managing the traffic on the way out (the only exit blocked due to flooding was Sepulveda South) by placing officers to manage traffic on Century Blvd. to alleviate the flow of traffic out of the airport, they instead blocked the entrance to the airport completely for 40 minutes. Just before the terminals, two police cars were placed across all traffic lanes preventing any traffic form entering the airport. Hundreds of people missed flights, not due to weather, but due to mismanagement by LAX authorities. People were running with bags down the airport roadway. I have never seen anything like it. It was the wrong answer to a bad problem. This is unacceptable and I would think that the airlines who pay LAX to be able to fly in and out of the airport should receive some competent service for their money. This is going to cost the airlines as well as the passengers.
Frust Rates

The parking structure was much worse. I tried to leave at 3 pm but due to horrendous backlog in the parking structure, I did not leave until 9 pm. Even at 9 pm, it too me 45 minutes just to exit the parking structure and another 45 minutes to get out of Century Blvd. This is the most horrible experience I witnessed so far.

The PA system in the terminal were completely oblivious of the mess outside.