> In November, Lyft, Uber and taxis were relegated to a pickup lot next to Terminal 1; travelers can either walk there or wait for an airport shuttle to ferry them.
LAX is a nightmare to drive to for dropping off passengers, though, so I'm actually fine with the policy here. It's the busiest origin and destination airport in the US so it has the most people entering and leaving landside.
If and only if there's a decent public transit alternative (train, metro, etc.) from the original terminal to the city then I really like cities that do this. That's rarely the case in the US and isn't at all at LAX, for now, but hopefully that will change within the decade.
It's because LAX is too small to fit all the traffic. It's gridlocked in the entire airport at peak times. You can literally walk the entire terminal loop in 20 mins, it's like 4 lanes, and it gets the most traffic in America IIRC. It's the biggest airport clusterfuck in america.
They don't really have a choice. Boston had the same problem and moved the pickup to Central Parking.
It's not really that bad although I'm sure at least somewhat confusing to arrivals familiar with the airport. I did one of my rare drive-ins to the airport last week--usually get a car--and I walked by the pickup area on the way to parking. It's well-marked and is no further away than most of the parking is. (Doesn't need a airport shuttle.)
I really hate cities that do this.