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The first thing to understand is that the Green Line was not built on its own merits, but as a condition for the construction of the Century Freeway.

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The Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, the precursor to today's Metropolitan Transportation Authority, began the process of planning the route.

At the western end of the Century Freeway, the line could either go north to LAX, which employed about 35,000 people, or south to El Segundo, home to about 90,000 aerospace workers. "It was a clear decision it would be better to go into the El Segundo employment area," said Richard Stanger, who was the commission's director of rail planning. "The models and everything indicated it was much better to go into El Segundo and focus on the needs of the everyday worker." But the models could not predict the collapse of the Soviet Union and, with it, the aerospace industry. By 1993, El Segundo had lost 45,000 jobs. By that point, however, construction of the Green Line was well under way.

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The Federal Aviation Administration also worried that a rail line would interfere with navigational equipment at the end of the runways and that overhead electric wires would intrude into flight paths. To solve that issue, the line would likely have to go underground, greatly increasing its cost.

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