Improving LAX; Max Boot on American isolationism; Texas’ economic ‘miracle’

The future of LAX

Re “Upscaling their flight plans,” July 3

Los Angeles International Airport officials should consider what other cities have done. San Francisco built a new terminal on top of existing structures, and Denver built a new airport outside the city.

LAX could do either. Move the main airport to Palmdale. Perhaps the airport could be reconfigured with long terminals similar to Denver’s, with underground connections between terminals. It would mean giving up the 1960s-era curbside arrival and departure and the central parking area for a centralized check-in and security entrance. This reconfiguration could also solve the north airfield question by allowing the south runway to move farther south.

Simpler solutions to the north runway complaints are to abandon it, restrict it to regional aircraft or recognize that the distance between the two runways is about the same as those at SFO. Westchester residents and businesses will fight efforts to move the northern runway farther north.

Denny Haythorn

Westchester

Airport officials should be working furiously with the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority to complete the light-rail system directly to the airport, without the need to transfer to the terminals.

Those airports that offer this convenience to travelers — San Francisco, Vancouver, London Heathrow, Washington’s Reagan National and Philadelphia, among others — have a major competitive advantage over those that do not, like LAX. Having a costly new rail system that doesn’t take people to a major gateway doesn’t make sense.

Daniel Fink

Beverly Hills

LAX is deficient not in restaurants or lounging areas but in the most basic of current amenities. At the top of the list is the ability to go from one terminal to another without having to go through security again. Preferably, this should be accomplished without having to walk long distances or by interfering with roadway or taxiway traffic.

Next on my list is rail transport directly to a stop inside the airport. This would relieve road congestion inside and around the airport.

Third is freeway access directly into the airport without first merging onto a heavily traveled local roadway. This would reduce the impact of traffic locally while improving traffic flow to the airport.

Restaurants, shops and the like fall very far down on the list

Ronald Schendel

Manhattan Beach

I was shocked that there was not a single mention of climate change in the article. Combating climate change means reducing air travel. However, the airport is counting on increased passenger volume to pay for the renovations.

Why is Los Angeles betting that the future will be business-as-usual when all the scientific evidence is telling us it can’t be?

Janina Moretti

La Jolla

Right problem, wrong cause

Re “For the U.S., retreat isn’t an option,” Opinion, July 5

“We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy,” declared Osama bin Laden. He has found an unlikely ally in Max Boot.

Boot blames isolationism for the fall of South Vietnam, the Cambodian genocide and the Iranian hostage crisis. But if we had not intervened in Vietnam in the first place, millions of casualties would have been avoided, including the Cambodian genocide, which resulted partly from our war and support for the king’s removal. Our role in toppling Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran led to the regime we now deplore.

Our interventions , not isolationism, are ruining us. We spend 43% of the world’s military expenditures and have more than 700 military bases globally, but that’s insufficient intervention for Boot.

Roger Carasso

Los Angeles

Let me get this straight: Boot wants to create an official department for colonialism and general nation-building and call it the Department of Peace?

“1984” was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.

Darren Dvoracek

La Cañada Flintridge

Less a miracle than a mirage

Re “A Texas miracle?,” Opinion, July 3

There is a difference between job creation and job relocation. Is Texas creating jobs that will lower the U.S. unemployment rate, or simply attracting companies from other states because of low wages, low business taxes and little regulation? If it is the latter, what we are talking about is another race to the bottom.

What we need is not for one state to profit from the loss of jobs in another, but real job creation based on a healthy economy with a repatriated industrial sector, a well-maintained infrastructure, a vigorous middle class and progressive taxation.

As long as we continue on our path, we will have no other choice than to fight among ourselves for whatever crumbs fall our way. And there will be no American job miracle.

Marie Matthews

San Pedro

Texas may seem a “miracle” pertaining to employment, but as Rick Wartzman notes, Texas is tied with Mississippi for having the highest percentage of workers paid at or below the minimum wage, and it has a high incidence of poverty. What’s so nice about that?

Also, Texas is the worst carbon dioxide emitter in the nation. Would you want to breath that air?

Gail Marie Noon

San Pedro

College mission

Re “He dreams of a new field at alma mater,” July 6

Though Snyder Field is gone, in its place at L.A. City College is a beautiful new academic quad that greets people entering the campus from the Vermont Avenue Metro stop.

The new Martin Luther King Jr. Library, Science and Technology Building and the Center for Child & Family Studies provide resources to prepare our students to transfer to four-year colleges or to enter the job market.

City College, with its small campus in one of the densest parts of L.A., is using bond-funded dollars to make a difference in our community. Athletics will continue to be an important part of the City College experience, but the community, faculty and administration agree that the college’s priority must be to help the broadest range of students to reach their career goals. The new academic resources at City College do that and more.

Jamillah Moore

Los Angeles

The writer is president of Los Angeles City College.

Silly city

Re “Council urges troop withdrawal,” July 6

So, we’re trying to figure out how to cut costs in emergency services, and our City Council, with the sole exception of newcomer Mitchell Englander, invokes the mostly symbolic gesture of calling on the federal government to end wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, planning to incorporate this into the city’s Washington lobbying efforts.

Irrespective of how one feels about the wars, I say kudos to Englander. To the rest: How dare you waste valuable time on such nonsense?

Liz White

Los Angeles

Water legacy

Re “Historian explored grandfather’s legacy,” Obituary, July 7

You cite Catherine Mulholland’s effort to restore the legacy of her grandfather, William Mulholland, who you state was “vilified for his central role in bringing water to Southern California.”

In his day, Mulholland was not vilified for irrigating Los Angeles but for the catastrophic failure of the St. Francis Dam in 1928. It is this piece of L.A. history that brought down Mulholland, who designed the faulty dam and inspected it just hours before it collapsed, killing hundreds of people.

Rhys Thomas

Valley Glen

Scooter sense

Re “Ride a scooter, save the world,” Out Here, July 6

I couldn’t agree more with Dan Turner on the virtues of scootering. I am a lifelong motorcyclist and, for about five years now, a scooter rider as well. But I do have two points I would like to contest.

First, park on the sidewalk at your own risk. I have been ticketed for doing so. And second, you very well can take home a load of groceries. I have a top case I fill, plus the space under the seat and a hook on the front rider-protecting shield from which to hang a bag. You’d be amazed at how much I can haul back.

Peter Rocca

West Hollywood