LAX SkyLink Fiasco as Evidence That Single-Party Democratic Rule Makes California Dysfunctional
Source: Chris Bray. "More Evidence California Is A Madhouse Where Nothing Works." October 20, 2026. thefederalist.com
The Gist
The author says the troubled LAX airport train project, which is years late, over budget, and tangled in bizarre lawsuits between the city and its builders, shows that California under one-party Democratic rule can't get anything done. He treats it as one more example in a pattern alongside the state's high-speed rail.
Conclusion
California, under single-party Democratic rule, is a dysfunctional place where public projects never work, deliver on promises, or stay on budget and schedule, and the LAX SkyLink project is further evidence of this.
Premises
- The LAX SkyLink people mover was promised to open in 2023 at a construction cost of $1.9 billion, but is now hoped to open in 2027 with construction costs expected to exceed $3 billion, and it has suffered structural failures and electrical arc/overcurrent events.
- The city agency (LAWA) and the contractor consortium (LINXS) are in open, hostile conflict, with mutual allegations of trespass, vandalism, breach of contract, destruction of completed work by other contractors, and deliberate sabotage of the project.
- The city's response to the sabotage allegation is a procedural attack on the complaint and an accusation that a LINXS engineer spied on city lawyers, rather than a substantive rebuttal, which suggests institutional dysfunction.
- The project resembles California's high-speed rail project, showing a pattern in which delivery bears no relationship to promises, cost estimates are unreliable, and completion dates are jokes.
- California has been governed by one party (Democrats) for a long period, and the author treats this as the common factor behind the repeated failures.
Assumptions
- The SkyLink and high-speed rail failures are representative of California public projects generally, not exceptional cases.
- Single-party Democratic rule is the cause (or a major cause) of these failures, rather than other factors such as project complexity, permitting, labor, or contractor behavior.
- Comparable projects under other political arrangements, or in other states, perform substantially better on cost and schedule.
- Allegations in the contractor's lawsuit are credible enough to illustrate government dysfunction, even though they are unproven.
- The lack of a prompt response from LAWA and LINXS to media inquiries is meaningful evidence of dysfunction.