The Brief

LAX’s Automated People Mover, the long-awaited train connecting airport terminals to the Metro system, was originally slated to open by 2023.

But the completion date has been pushed back until early 2026. And now, the final testing and safety checks won't be done until June 2026, according to the independent credit rating agency Fitch Ratings.

The project’s not just late. It’s now $880 million more expensive than the original $1.9 billion price tag.

A report from the 2024-25 L.A. County Grand Jury released in June determined that the LAX Automated People Mover has been slowed by a strained relationship between Los Angeles World Airports and its contractor for the project, LINXS, “inadequate” conflict resolution processes and political pressures. According to the grand jury, LINXS took advantage of these factors to “force” the city to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to settle disputes.

The report from the grand jury includes findings that could inform other large scale infrastructure projects, including the recently approved expansion of the downtown L.A. Convention Center.

What is the Automated People Mover?

The 2.25 mile-long elevated train will eventually shuttle travelers between the airport terminals, car rental center and newly opened LAX Metro Transit Center.

In 2018, L.A. City Council approved a $4.9 billion contract for LINXS to design, build, finance, operate and maintain the Automated People Mover over a 30-year period.

It’s one part of a $30 billion LAX renovation plan that has been billed the largest public works program in the history of Los Angeles.

Of the total amount, $1.9 billion was allocated for the “initial design and construction cost,” according to the grand jury report.

The updated timeline has the train operating just in time for the 2026 World Cup in Los Angeles, although the CEO of Los Angeles World Airports told the L.A. Times there are backup plans in case the people mover is not ready by the start of the tournament next June.

What went wrong?

The project was initially conceived as a design-build contract, meaning the same entity was responsible for both the design and construction of the train. According to the grand jury report, this contract structure is supposed to minimize the need for change orders that add costs to a project after construction has started.

Despite this arrangement, the Automated People Mover racked up change orders.

“LINXS was not following the approved submittals,” one city official told the report authors. “They did what they wanted and treated the work as if the contract were a design-build, redesign, build redesign.”

By the end of 2023, the city had already paid more than $200 million to settle disputes, including $100 million to resolve a design criteria change.

According to the report, an additional 209 claims needed to be resolved, and as a result, work slowed and the relationship between LAWA and LINXS frayed.

In 2024, the work slowed enough that Fitch, the credit rating agency, downgraded the project's prospects.

“The project has experienced extended construction delays, prolonged dispute resolution, and difficulties in the parties' working relationship,” Fitch wrote, leading to “uncertainty regarding the project's timely completion.”

The report said this put pressure on the city to resolve the outstanding disputes quickly so that work could resume at full speed and the train could be complete in time for the mega-events L.A. is playing host to over the next three years.

According to the grand jury, LINXS “leveraged the change order process by implicitly holding out the threat of prolonged litigation to force LAWA to agree to the change orders, and to get the project completed in time for the high profile events so as not to embarrass the City.”

The agencies agreed to a “global settlement,” resolving all the outstanding disputes for a total of $550 million and pushing back the completion date to December 2025, with passenger service following early in the new year.

An August report from Fitch blames continued “construction delays, prolonged dispute resolution and difficulties in the parties’ working relationship” for the most recent pushback of the train’s completion to June 2026.

Lessons learned

The authors of the grand jury report said the ultimate purpose of the report was to “offer suggestions or recommendations” to minimize similar delays and cost overruns for future capital projects in the region, including the expansion of the convention center.

One recommendation includes considering how publicly committing to completion timelines could affect the city’s “ability to negotiate” with its contractor.

“What if City makes a commitment to hold a convention based on projected renovation completion date?” the report states. “Construction delays may force excessive change orders to meet the commitment.”

Los Angeles World Airports wrote a letter to the City Council in January detailing what they believe could be improved for future public-private partnerships, including revising the dispute resolution process and improving coordination with other city agencies through the design and construction phases.

A Los Angeles World Airports spokesperson didn’t say whether there would or wouldn’t be any future work with the Automated People Mover contractor.

“LAWA continues to work with LINXS on the Automated People Mover project, which is planned to open to the public in early 2026,” the spokesperson told LAist earlier this year — before the completion date was moved once more. “Contracts for future projects will be issued in accordance with policies and procedures set forth by LAWA and the City of Los Angeles.”

The Trump administration sent shockwaves through the U.S. mental health and drug addiction system late Tuesday, sending hundreds of termination letters, effective immediately, for federal grants supporting health services.

Three sources said they believe total cuts to nonprofit groups, many providing street-level care to people experiencing addiction, homelessness and mental illness, could reach roughly $2 billion. NPR wasn't able to independently confirm the scale of the grant cancellation. The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) didn't respond to a request for clarification.

"We are definitely looking at severe loss of front-line capacity," said Andrew Kessler, head of Slingshot Solutions, a consultancy firm that works with mental health and addiction groups nationwide. "[Programs] may have to shut their doors tomorrow."

Kessler said he has reviewed numerous grant termination letters from "Salt Lake City to El Paso to Detroit, all over the country."

Ryan Hampton, the founder of Mobilize Recovery, a national advocacy nonprofit for people in and seeking recovery, told NPR his group lost roughly $500k "overnight."

"Waking up to nearly $2 billion in grant cancellations means front-line providers are forced to cease overdose prevention, naloxone distribution, and peer recovery services immediately, leaving our communities defenseless against a raging crisis," Hampton said. "This cruelty will be measured in lives lost, as recovery centers shutter and the safety net we built is slashed overnight. We are witnessing the dismantling of our recovery infrastructure in real-time, and the administration will have blood on its hands for every preventable death that follows."

Copies of the letter sent to two different organizations and reviewed by NPR signal that SAMHSA officials no longer believe the defunded programs align with the Trump administration's priorities.

The letter points to efforts to reshape the national health system in part by restructuring SAMHSA's grant program, which "includes terminating some of its … awards."

According to the letter, grants are terminated as of yesterday, Jan.13, adding that "costs resulting from financial obligations incurred after termination are not allowable."

The National Association of County Behavioral Health and Developmental Disability Directors sent a letter to members saying it believes "over 2,000 grants [nationwide] with a total of more than $2 billion" are affected. The group said it's still working to understand the "full scope" of the cuts.

This move comes on top of deep Medicaid cuts, passed last year by the Republican-controlled Congress, which affect numerous mental health and addiction care providers.

Kessler told NPR he's hearing alarm from care providers nationwide that the safety net for people experiencing an addiction or mental health crisis could unravel.

"In the short term, there's going to be severe damage. We're going to have to scramble," he said.

Regina LaBelle, a Georgetown University professor who served as acting head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy during the Biden administration, said the SAMHSA grants pay for life saving services.

"From first responders to drug courts, continued federal funding quite literally save lives," LaBelle said. "The overdose epidemic has been declared a public health emergency and overdose deaths are decreasing. This is no time to pull critical funding."

Requests for comment from SAMHSA and the Department of Health and Human Services were not immediately returned.

This is a developing story.

Copyright 2026 NPR

When the head of the nation’s largest publicly operated health plan worries about the looming federal cuts to Medicaid, it’s not just her job. It’s personal.

Martha Santana-Chin, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, grew up on Medi-Cal, California’s version of Medicaid, the government-run health care program for people with low incomes and disabilities. Today, she is CEO of L.A. Care, which runs by far the biggest Medi-Cal health plan with more than 2.2 million enrollees, exceeding the Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program enrollments in 41 states.

“If it weren’t for safety nets like the Medi-Cal program, I think, many people would be stuck in poverty without an ability to get out,” she said. “For me personally, not having to worry about health care allowed me to really focus on what I needed to focus on, which was my education.”

As she begins her second year steering L.A. Care, Santana-Chin is grappling with federal and state spending cuts that complicate her task of providing health care to the poor and medically vulnerable enrollees in Medicaid. The insurer also provides Affordable Care Act marketplace plans through Covered California.

Santana-Chin warns that the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, enacted last year and also known as HR 1, could result in 650,000 enrollees falling off L.A. Care’s Medi-Cal rolls by the end of 2028. This will strain the plan’s finances as revenues decline. The insurer had revenues of $11.7 billion in the last fiscal year.

HR 1 is expected to cut more than $900 billion from Medicaid over the next 10 years — including $30 billion or more in California, according to the Department of Health Care Services, which runs Medi-Cal.

Like other states facing big deficits, California has reduced its Medicaid spending through such steps as freezing new enrollments for immigrants without legal status and reintroducing an asset limit. And that’s before the state reckons with the spending cuts that likely will be required by the withdrawal of so many federal dollars under HR 1.

Santana-Chin oversaw Medi-Cal and Medicare operations for the for-profit insurer Health Net before taking the helm of L.A. Care in January 2025, nearly three years after state regulators fined L.A. Care $55 million over violations they said compromised the health and safety of its members. L.A. Care paid $27 million in penalties to the state and agreed to contribute $28 million to community health projects.

In a wide-ranging interview, Santana-Chin talked to KFF Health News senior correspondent Bernard J. Wolfson about the financial headwinds facing L.A. Care and why she believes health care shouldn’t be restricted based on a person’s immigration status. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: You grew up on Medicaid. How has that shaped your views now that you run one of the largest Medicaid plans in the country?

What really motivates me is knowing that many of the people that we’re serving are just like my family. They’ve struggled and have had to have their own children translate things that were very difficult to translate. I remember doing that for my own mother. You know, basic human dignity requires that you have access to health care.

Martha Santana - Chin, CEO of L.A. Care, is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and was a beneficiary of Medi - Cal throughout her childhood. Because of that experience, she says, the concerns of L.A. Care members resonate with her on a personal level.

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Bernard J. Wolfson

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KFF Health News

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Q: Has anything you’ve dealt with at Health Net or L.A. Care reminded you of your childhood experiences in Medi-Cal?

Back then they didn’t cover transportation, and we didn’t have a vehicle. Today, one of the issues we’ll hear from our members is the need to make sure we have trustworthy transportation that shows up on time, where the drivers treat them with respect. Had I had that, had my mother had that, life would have been much easier.

Q: What do you think the impact of HR 1 will be?

It’s going to devastate the delivery system. The state obviously isn’t going to be able to make up for the shortfalls in federal funding, and over the course of the next several years, funding is going to be less and less, and the people we cover are going to decrease significantly. We are expecting between now and the end of 2028 that we’re going to see 650,000 people drop off the rolls. That’s just L.A. Care.

Q: That’s over a quarter of your Medi-Cal enrollment.

Yes, it’s very, very significant. The reductions in payment and the rise in uncompensated care are really going to impact our delivery system. As the delivery system gets destabilized and hospitals and other health care providers are forced to close services or reduce the number of sites they have, it’s going to impact access. And it’s not only going to impact those that lose coverage.

Q: How will L.A. Care respond?

Obviously, we’re going to see a significant drop in revenue. We’re very focused on making sure that we are operating as efficiently as we can operate. And we are looking at creative ways to use technology to empower our people to do higher-level work. Mostly supporting our call center agents with smarter technology that helps them answer questions and resolve problems more quickly. Some of it is automating processes on the claims payment side.

Q: What do you have to say to congressional Republicans who passed HR 1?

We are at a point of inflection in the health care delivery system. And we have to recognize that some of the components of HR 1 will have long-term unintended consequences — maybe they were intended; I’ve got to believe that some of these things are not. There’s probably a need to reconsider some of the things that were passed.

Q: Such as?

Work requirements are an example of something that many people did believe was the right thing to do to be good stewards of the health care dollar. It is very complex and is going to cause people to lose coverage that actually do qualify. It’s unfortunate, and that would be something that I would urge folks to reconsider.

Q: What impact do you expect from California’s decision to freeze Medi-Cal enrollment for immigrants without legal status?

It doesn’t matter what immigration status you are. If you are a human being and you need health care, you’re going to try to access health care wherever you can. That’s going to put a strain on the delivery system if you’re uninsured.

Q: What has L.A. Care done to address the state’s concerns in 2022 that it delayed authorizing care and addressing patient grievances?

There has been quite a bit of investment in the L.A. Care infrastructure over the last several years — our IT platforms, our data. There’s also quite a bit of investment in adding new capacity, adding bandwidth to many of the teams, more folks to help support the work.

Q: How have federal immigration raids in L.A. affected L.A. Care members and the broader community?

It absolutely has had a chilling effect. Families are afraid to come in. They’re not taking their children to get vaccinated. I’ve had numerous providers in emergency departments say that they have experienced a drop in the volume of individuals coming in. One of our case managers was really distraught because there was an individual that decided to forgo serious lifesaving treatment because of fear.

Take accountability and move forward.

Those were the two points Los Angeles Fire Chief Jaime Moore hit repeatedly when speaking with LAist’s Larry Mantle this week.

On taking accountability, Moore said hazardous conditions and decisions made before the Palisades Fire erupted a year ago meant “our firefighters never had a chance” to arrest the fire that killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of structures.

On moving forward, he emphasized that reform is already in the works.

“Things have changed since the Palisades Fire, and we're going to continue making big changes in the Los Angeles Fire Department,” said Moore, who was selected for the LAFD top job by Mayor Karen Bass in November.

Here are three takeaways from the interview, which aired on AirTalk on Tuesday.

1. Staffing decisions hampered fire response

The LAFD uses a so-called pre-deployment matrix to set firefighter staffing levels ahead of high-risk weather.

According to the department’s after-action report, however, staffing levels on the day the Palisades Fire began fell short of the LAFD standard for extreme weather conditions. The National Weather Service had warned of low humidity, high winds and dry vegetation, what it calls a “particularly dangerous situation.” It’s the highest level of alert the agency can give.

Despite the high risk, the LAFD report said the decision not to deploy more firefighters in advance was in part made to save money.

Moore said Monday that the department has updated its policies to increase staffing for especially hazardous conditions, but he said he doesn’t believe additional resources would have stopped a fire of the magnitude that leveled the Palisades.

To suppress that kind of fire, he said, the department would need to pre-deploy resources across the city’s vast geography — to places like Baldwin Hills, Franklin Canyon, the Hollywood Hills, the Palisades, Porter Ranch and Sunland-Tujunga.

Moore said the department has already made new policies to call for more resources when the Weather Service issues a “particularly dangerous situation” alert.

2. LAFD is mostly an urban firefighting department

Moore referenced a key finding of the after-action report regarding a lack of training in wildland firefighting, which contributed to confusion and struggles to effectively utilize resources during the fire.

Wildland fires pose a number of challenges that are different from what firefighters face in urban environments. Those include the need to coordinate a large number of resources over vast areas, all while dealing with fast-moving flames that can rapidly tear through dry plants and structures.

The department found in its report that fewer firefighters were trained in fighting these wildland fires in recent years and that “leaders struggled to comprehend their roles.”

Some leaders in the department had “limited or no experience in managing an incident of such complexity,” the report said. And some reverted to doing the work of lower positions, leaving high-level decision-making positions unfilled.

“What we're doing now is really furthering that training and reinforcing that education with our firefighters so that they could be better prepared,” Moore said on AirTalk.

3. Changes to the after-action report

Early versions of the after-action report differed from the version released to the public in October, a fact that was first reported by the Los Angeles Times. The Times also reported that Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook, who wrote the report, wouldn’t endorse the final version because of the changes.

Moore acknowledged to the L.A. Board of Fire Commissioners at a Jan. 6 meeting that the report had been watered down.

“It is now clear that multiple drafts were edited to soften language and reduce explicit criticism of department leadership in that final report,” Moore told the commissioners. “This editing occurred prior to my appointment as fire chief, and I can assure you that nothing of this sort will ever again happen while I am fire chief."

Some changes were small but telling. A section titled “Failures” later became “Primary Challenges.”

Moore told LAist that changes between versions “ made it easier for the public to understand,” but an LAist review found the edits weren’t all surface-level.

In the first version of the report, the department said the decision not to fully pre-deploy all available resources for the particularly dangerous wind event “did not align” with their guidelines for such extreme weather cases. The final version said that the initial response “lacked the appropriate resources,” removing the reference to department standards.

The department also removed some findings that had to do with communications.

One sentence from the initial version of the report said: “Most companies lacked a basic briefing, leader’s intent, communications plan, or updated fire information for more than 36 hours.” That language was removed from the final report.

LAist has asked the Fire Department for clarification about why these assertions were removed but did not receive a response before time of publication.