TRAVEL INSIDER : How to Improve LAX? Readers Present Views : Transportation: New airport manager answers critics and offers some of his own proposals and solutions.

By CHRISTOPHER REYNOLDS

March 14, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES TRAVEL WRITER

This just in: Travelers often run into frustration at Los Angeles International Airport.

They run into frustration, to be fair, in all the world’s major airports. Those troubles often have more to do with individual airlines, or customs officials, or immigration officials, than with airport management. But LAX is our airport, and the City of Los Angeles has installed a new administrator to run it, and this is his chance--well, one of his chances--to hear what troubles us travelers most.

Last month I asked readers if you had any suggestions for the incoming manager of the city air port department. You did. They ran from the public address system to the indoor air quality to luggage carts lingering--just as so many of us do in real life--at the curb where incoming travelers wait for their rides. The dominant concern: how to more efficiently route incoming passengers from their planes to their luggage to their ground transportation.

Jack Driscoll, a 50-year-old administrator who spent the last 14 years as personnel director for the City of Los Angeles, started work as head of the city airport department in January. He is responsible for 1992-93 fiscal year spending of $195.6 million, most of it at LAX, but also scattered millions at Palmdale Regional Airport, Ontario International Airport and Van Nuys General Aviation Airport.

“There are glitches, and there are problems,” allowed Driscoll in a conversation last week. “But everybody (working) out here seems to be very customer-service oriented.”

As a “civilian” traveler, he added, his biggest complaint with the airport was probably its signage: “I think I was in the Delta terminal flying out a couple of times, and I never knew there was a Burger King in the terminal. I might have gotten a burger and some fries.”

Here’s a sampling of the suggestions readers had for him, followed by Driscoll’s responses:

Posting arrival times: Jacqueline Liscom of Northridge notes that “since most of the congestion in front of the airport parking area is caused by people picking up passengers, I think it would be a tremendous help if there were arrival times posted in front. . . . If you are alone when you are picking up a passenger, you can’t leave your car to go inside and find out if the plane is on time.”

Ann R. Lane of Los Angeles, writing on a handsome postcard from the Louvre in Paris, raises the same issue: “For years I have wanted TV screens in front of the baggage areas with status of arriving flights, LARGE enough to be seen from a car,” she writes. “People would know if the plane has arrived, or if they should park in the lots. This would reduce congestion (& no doubt tickets) and reduce frustration of those picking up arriving passengers.”

“Not a bad idea,” said Driscoll, “although we try through our airport police to keep that traffic moving. Nobody has suggested (video displays for passing pick-up traffic) in the time I’ve been here, but maybe it’s something we ought to look at.”

In any event, he added, “I would caution people to use the phone to call in first and see if the flight’s going to be on time.”

Grabbing baggage and hearing announcements: Jill and Charles Olechno of Los Angeles suggest that “it would be helpful if the baggage claim areas were restricted to passengers only; after busy flights it is often impossible to approach the carousels.” They also complain that “one of the most irritating things about all the LAX terminals is the quality of the public-address systems. They are almost totally incomprehensible because the sound is so distorted.”

The design and staffing of baggage claim areas is up to the various airlines that lease space at LAX, as is the design of their public address systems. Most of the announcements you hear in the airport are made on airline public-address systems, and each carrier has its own.

Driscoll did note, however that the trend in baggage area design seems to be toward making those areas more roomy. American Airlines is planning to expand its baggage claim area in a renovation project that begins in April, he said.

As for banning non-passengers from baggage claim areas, Driscoll said he understood the attractiveness of the idea, but warned that frustration levels might run higher than they do now if just-united passengers and their loved ones were asked to separate again when they approached the luggage.

Controlling van traffic: Mary M. de Vall of Santa Monica complains that when arriving travelers emerge from the LAX terminal into the ground transportation area on the lower level, “it is well-nigh impossible to identify oncoming vans. And when another hotel van is boarding passengers at the curb, one’s view is totally blocked, making it impossible to see your hotel’s van and try to flag it down before it passes in another lane. . . . Is there some way to control the frequency of vans circling the airport so the lanes are not being flooded with the same companies’ vehicles?”

“We’ve got some systems in place,” said Driscoll, and proceeded to explain an arrangement most travelers are probably unaware of. (Driscoll conceded that he, too, was unaware until he got the airport job.) Each shuttle bus serving LAX carries a monitor, and the signals of those monitors are followed by an airport tracking system, with bills charged accordingly. A van pays $1 each for its first three loops through the pick-up area, Driscoll said, and after that the rate jumps to $10 a loop, as a economic deterrent to traffic-clogging.

Still, Driscoll acknowledged, the traffic remains tough.

“The signage, I think, needs to be improved a little bit, in terms of identifying what vans are supposed to be where,” he said.

Second-hand smoke: Esther Schiller of Newbury Park says she is “concerned about the problem of second-hand smoke” and calls for bans on smoking in all areas where the public or employees might be present, including airport vehicles, restaurants and airline membership lounges, and outdoor waiting areas within 15 feet of entrances.

Though smoking is banned on all domestic flights, it is permitted in various areas of the airport, including restaurants and lounges. “We’re doing a study as to what other (airports) are doing,” said Driscoll. “It’s our plan then to look at our environment . . . and come back to the airport commission with a proposal.”

The cost of a cart: Joy Schnebel of Laguna Niguel writes that “it’s embarrassing telling our foreign visitors they have to put a dollar bill into a machine to get a luggage cart that’s provided free in London, Mexico City, Tokyo, etc. . . . They think we are inhospitable, backward and/or greedy. True?”

It turns out that we are not entirely inhospitable, at least by the luggage-cart standard. In 1991, LAX officials stopped charging for the use of baggage carts in the Tom Bradley International Terminal, thereby cushioning the blow for many new arrivals. But incoming domestic passengers still have to pay $1 for the same carts. So if an international visitor arrives at Kennedy airport in New York, clears customs and immigration there, then continues to Los Angeles via a domestic flight and starts looking for a free cart . . . well, the whole inhospitable/backward/greedy thing enters the picture again.

Driscoll said there are no immediate plans to stop charging in the domestic terminal or to start charging again in the international area. He noted that the domestic terminal fee is intended not as a money-maker but as a way to keep carts from being strewn about the vast airport property. Now that the international terminal has no cart charge, he said, “you will see those carts floating around the terminal in a lot of places where we have to go out and get them. People don’t take them home, but they do take them a way down the road.”

One airport issue that readers didn’t raise--public transportation access--is near the top of Driscoll’s own priority list. In some of his first public remarks after taking the $147,000-a-year airport job, Driscoll wondered aloud about the absence of a plan to connect the route of the Metro Green Line to the airport. Since then, Driscoll said, he and transportation officials have started “working closely together” to make the airport and the city’s fledgling subway system work together. The Green Line is scheduled to open in 1994.

“The issue is not dead at all,” said Driscoll. “It’s very much alive.”