Politics & Government
Orange Line Makes Bob Hope Airport Accessible from West Valley
$112.6 million transportation center to be built at airport in Burbank.
Ground was broken Friday on a $112.6 million transportation center at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank that will include a bus station and consolidated car rental center.
The transportation center will significantly improve access to the airport by means other than a car. The opening of the Metro Orange Line extension to the Metrolink and Amtrak station in Chatsworth last week will make Bob Hope Airport accessible by bus or train to much more of the west San Fernando Valley, airport public information officer Victor Gill said.
The Regional Intermodal Transportation Center will be located on the southeast corner of the airport. It will include an elevated moving walkway to the airport terminal building and a five-level parking structure to replace about 1,050 parking spaces that will be displaced.
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Officials with the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority, Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Sherman Oaks and Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich were on hand for the event.
The center will be located on the northwest corner of West Empire Avenue and North Hollywood Way, directly across from a Metrolink and Amtrak train stop.
Find out what's happening in Northridge-Chatsworthwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
The project stemmed in part from a Federal Aviation Administration mandate to decommission the existing rental car parking lot by 2015 because it is too close to an airport runway, Gill said.
The new transportation center is scheduled to open in the summer of 2014.
The airport authority also began a two-year study of how a dedicated bus lane might connect the airport directly to the North Hollywood Metro Red Line station and how to improve transit from the airport to Glendale and Pasadena.
Travel at Bob Hope Airport was down to 4.3 million passengers in 2011 from its peak year in 2007, when 5.9 million travelers used the airport.
"Today's dedication of this vital transportation center is only the beginning, and now we have a blueprint on which we will develop a regional transportation system with rail connections to our airports to serve our county's 10 million people in 88 cities and 134 unincorporated communities," Antonovich said.
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