Another California Rail Disaster: Over $1 Billion Per Mile for LAX SkyLink, Contractor Sues City

California taxpayers are once again footing the bill for another Democrat-led rail fiasco, this time at Los Angeles International Airport, where the long-delayed SkyLink Automated People Mover (APM)—just 2.25 miles of elevated track—has ballooned to over $3.3 billion in costs, or roughly $1.47 billion per mile. The only high-speed thing in California is the velocity at which tax dollars disappear.

The contractor building the system is now suing the city, accusing Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) of breaching contracts, concealing delays, shifting blame, and creating obstacles that have pushed the project years behind schedule. LAX Integrated Express Solutions (LINXS), the public-private partnership consortium tasked with designing, building, financing, operating, and maintaining the SkyLink, filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court last week (see below) and is expected to be heard in December.

According to the complaint:

This case arose because of LAWA’s decisions in implementing the Contract and its meritless effort to blame the delay in putting the APM into public service on Developer. That effort includes LAWA’s concealment of the errors of its problematic sister agency, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (“LADWP”). There are several reasons the People Mover is being delayed; all of them are attributable to the acts and omissions of LAWA.

On information and belief, LAWA concealed that it knew LADWP had mis-designed the power feeder cables and failed to complete its coordination study until very recently when California Public Record Requests forced LADWP to disgorge documents. Upon information and belief, LAWA’s withholding of this information from Developer was part of LAWA’s scheme to blame Developer for the power outage even though LAWA knew that it and LADWP were responsible.

A third reason LAWA refuses to acknowledge that it is causing Project delay is that if it did so, it would have to pay Developer $115,000,000, a long overdue payment that LAWA committed to pay years ago. If LAWA acted as it is required under the Contract and did not manufacture delay to the Project, then Developer could complete construction by October 8, 2026. By working counter to Developer rather than in cooperation, LAWA breached the implied duty of good faith and fair dealing as well as the express terms of the Contract. LAWA’s intentional misconduct has made this lawsuit necessary.

The company claims the city altered drawings, stonewalled resolutions, and refused payments and timeline extensions for issues like electrical metering cabinet repairs degraded by moisture and debris. LINXS warns of potential “catastrophic consequences,” including contract termination and massive lender repayments. 

SkyLink, part of the broader Landside Access Modernization Program, was supposed to open around 2023, prior to the FIFA World Cup, to whisk passengers between terminals, the rental car center, and Metro transit, easing the notorious LAX traffic nightmare. Instead, testing with empty trains drags on in 2026, with no firm opening date. 

LAWA has already coughed up hundreds of millions in settlements and change orders, including a $550 million global package, to keep the project limping along. 

Meanwhile, just a few hundred miles north, the crown jewel of California’s rail delusions, Gavin Newsom’s California High-Speed Rail, continues its slow-motion collapse. 

Taxpayers have shelled out $16 billion with zero miles of operational high-speed track laid and only about 80 miles of concrete guideway completed. Original estimates hovered around $33–45 billion for the San Francisco-to-Los Angeles line; now taxpayers are staring down $100–231 billion depending on the latest business plan revisions, with an Initial Operating Segment possibly in the 2030s—if ever. 

Recent record change orders, like a $537 million payout to one contractor, and dropped lawsuits over yanked federal billions only underscore the chaos. 

From the $1.47 billion-per-mile SkyLink shuttle to the black-hole HSR project, the pattern is unmistakable: Democrat priorities deliver sky-high costs, endless delays, contractor lawsuits, and little results that cost billions.

Newsom, who oversees the state’s broader transportation failures while Los Angeles city officials (fellow Democrats) bungle the LAX “people mover,” has presided over a culture where accountability is optional and taxpayer money is apparently infinite.

Critics have long warned that these projects reek of mismanagement, scope creep, regulatory bloat, and political favoritism. Supporters mumble about “long-term investments” and “complex megaprojects,” but Californians stuck in traffic or watching their gas taxes vanish deserve better than empty promises and empty trains.

SkyLink may eventually limp into service, years late and billions over budget, providing a fancy people mover for one airport. But when even a 2.25-mile rail line becomes a billion-dollar-per-mile embarrassment, it’s clear California’s Democrat-dominated government has turned infrastructure into an expensive art form: performative, inefficient, and paid for by you.