LAX's Terminal Train Slips Again, This Time to January 2027

The airport's automated train is still fenced off in testing, and its price has climbed more than $1 billion over budget.

The LAX train meant to link the terminals with parking, rental cars and Metro has missed every opening date it's been given. The newest one is January 2027.

That's the latest projection for the automated people mover at Los Angeles International Airport, first reported by FOX 11 on Sept. 24, 2026. The target before this one was October. The one before that was 2023.

Here's every date, and what became of it.

The promises, in order

• 2019: Construction officially started, and the plan had the train carrying passengers four years later, in 2023. It didn't happen.
• April 2026: Vanessa Rodriguez, speaking for Los Angeles World Airports, told the station the system was deep in testing. "So, about 60 days, we'll be able to integrate the entire system," she said. By FOX 11's count, those 60 days have now run to nearly 160.
• The most recent target: an October opening.
• Now: January 2027, about four months away.

Four dates. No passengers.

The cost has moved in the other direction. The project's price has climbed more than $1 billion above what it was first supposed to cost, the outlet reported. On Thursday, its crew found the people mover still behind a fence, with no construction workers and no trains running anywhere in view.

Every trip this train was built for is still a trip you're making the old way: from a rideshare pickup area, a rental car counter, a parking structure or a Metro station, over to your terminal. Seven years after the groundbreaking, that last stretch of your trip is still waiting for the thing that was supposed to fix it.

The airport's side

An LAX spokesperson said the testing has to be finished before anyone rides. The spokesperson, who called it the SkyLink train, said safety and reliability come first, and that exhaustive checks on the tracks, the signals and the cars themselves are normal practice for a big airport transit system. The airport, the statement said, won't bend its safety rules, because it wants a train that serves Los Angeles and the global events headed its way.

That's a fair case, and I'd take a late train over an unsafe one every time. The hot take I'll defend is narrower: the trouble isn't the testing, it's the countdown. Nobody made the airport say "about 60 days" in April. A date it can't hold costs it more trust than a straight answer that testing takes as long as it takes.

The Olympics clock

Every slip also pushes the train closer to the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, when the city expects the world to land at LAX. Travelers the station talked to weren't placing bets on it. One likened the project to California's high-speed rail; another said other countries would have finished years ago.

Anil Bhandari, a traveler, told FOX 11 it would take a miracle for the train to be running by the Games. Then he put up a prize: "I'll give you a free bottle of champagne if it does."

January is the next date to hold the airport to.

Source: foxla.com, retrieved September 25, 2026.