The project's not just late — it's now also $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. By the end of 2023, the city had already paid more than $200 million to settle disputes, and the agencies agreed to a "global settlement" resolving all the outstanding disputes for a total of $550 million.

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.

Despite this arrangement, which is supposed to minimize the need for change orders that add costs after construction has started, the Automated People Mover racked up change orders.

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