Labor Day Traffic at LAX Expected to Be Down 15%

What a difference a year makes.

Last August and the subsequent Labor Day holiday were record travel periods at Los Angeles International Airport, with the highest passenger totals of any month recorded in the facility’s 73-year history.

This year, however, officials expect Labor Day traffic to be down 15%, with 700,000 travelers passing through the world’s fifth-busiest airport during the four-day weekend.

With the economy still in the doldrums and the effects of the terrorist attacks lingering, air travel isn’t the only mode of transportation expected to languish this weekend. Car trips are also projected to be down, according to the Auto Club of Southern California. Travel by boat, bus and train, however, is expected to increase.

At LAX, Labor Day travel projections are on par with the number of passengers who used the airport over Memorial Day--a sign that the improvement in air traffic earlier this year is stalling. A move by airlines to slash their schedules at LAX by 20% in the last year contributed to the decline.

“The good news is traffic is moving, but the bad news is that traffic is moving,� said Paul Haney, an airport spokesman, illustrating the stagnation with a reference to the airport’s horseshoe-shaped roadway. The road was jammed most of the time last August, but remains relatively easy to navigate this year.

Throughout California, the number of residents who will travel from today through Monday is expected to drop about 1% this year, to 4.63 million. An Auto Club spokeswoman, Marie Montgomery, said she was surprised that car travel isn’t rising this summer, considering that gasoline prices have remained relatively steady for several months.

“One of the things we have noticed is that there doesn’t seem to be a relationship between gas prices and travel by car,� she said.

Even so, California posted higher gas prices than the rest of the nation for the last week in August, according to a survey by the Energy Information Administration. Prices for a gallon of regular gasoline were $1.59 in California on Monday, compared with $1.52 in New York state, $1.43 in Colorado and $1.31 in Texas, the report found.

Nationwide, the biggest decrease will come from air travel, which is expected to drop 6% compared with last year, according to the Auto Club’s survey of travel agents.

Instead of taking to the skies, vacationers planning short jaunts--for example from Los Angeles to San Diego, or Santa Barbara to Monterey Bay--are more often getting in their cars and driving, said Jack Keady, a Playa del Rey-based aviation consultant.

In addition, many travelers are fed up with security hassles at airports and would rather forgo air travel for pleasure, even if they must do so for business.

“As people continue to go through the X-ray machines and continue to get pulled aside for secondary screening or a full-body search, a certain amount of resentment or rebellion builds up in them,� Keady said.

Particularly onerous are secondary screenings at the gate and requests by security personnel that passengers take off their shoes and run them through X-ray machines, he said.

Travel industry experts also warned people who are flying this weekend to take particular notice of new airline rules that require fees for more than two checked bags per person and for oversized luggage.

Travel by bus, boat and train this weekend is expected to increase 7% over last year. Contributing to this increase is the redirecting of many cruise routes from the Mediterranean to Alaska and Mexico, prompting more Americans to take cruises this summer, Montgomery said.

“It’s phenomenal how many more cruises we’re booking because they’re cheaper and the cruise lines have to fill those cabins,� she added.

For Southern Californians, the top travel destinations are expected to be the Central California coast, San Diego, Las Vegas, San Francisco and the Grand Canyon.

For Southland motorists who plan to travel on the Golden State Freeway, authorities caution that there will be traffic delays near Magic Mountain in Santa Clarita because of roadway repairs that close one lane in each direction.

The California Department of Transportation suggests motorists use The Old Road, which runs parallel to the freeway, as an alternate route through Santa Clarita.

Drivers can check on road conditions at (800) 427-7623.