Los Angeles >> Los Angeles World Airports officials outlined an ambitious plan to connect the Metro rail with Los Angeles International Airport in an appearance Wednesday before two City Council committees.

Under the plan shared with members of the Transportation and Trade, Commerce and Tourism Committees, LAX would build a new ground transportation facility near the corner of Airport Boulevard and West 96th Street, about a mile northeast of the Central Terminal Area.

According to a rendering, the facility would have an underground station for Metro’s Green and Crenshaw lines. Currently, no rail line reaches the airport, though the Green Line deposits riders about 15 minutes from the terminals via bus.

From the facility, according to the rendering, travelers would board an automated people mover for the short journey to the airport’s nine terminals. The facility would also accept buses from throughout the Los Angeles area, and arriving passengers could check their bags there, rather than in the terminals.

“It is basically a transit hub that would finally do what every reasonable thinking Angeleno has been crying out for a generation, which is connecting mass transit to the airport,” said Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Bonin, whose district includes the airport.

The general guidelines for the project were approved by the City Council in April, though they were overshadowed by a related proposal to increase the distance between LAX’s two northernmost runways by 260 feet. Airport officials said the runways must move for safety reasons, but new Mayor Eric Garcetti came out against the shift during the campaign, siding with neighbors who say it is not necessary, and its future is now in doubt.

Now, it appears, airport officials may be shifting their focus back to the ground transportation elements approved by the council. The Wednesday presentation was requested by Bonin and colleague Tom LaBonge.

Officials with Los Angeles World Airports, the city department that operates LAX, also said they continue to explore building a consolidated rental car facility in the former Manchester Square neighborhood, where houses have been cleared out over many years.

But the transportation center received most of the focus Wednesday with Bonin, who has disagreed with airport staff about the runway issue but praised officials for their rail proposal.

“I think this is the smartest and easiest option available to us,” Bonin said. “It actually gets passengers to the airport in a super-convenient way, and it does so in a way that can resolve a lot of the funding issues.”

Still, Martha Welborne, Metro’s executive director for countywide planning, said it’s probably too early to focus on one alternative. She said the Federal Transit Administration requires entities like Metro to explore several options before choosing one.

“It’s one of the options we are looking at,” she said. “The airport is trying to jump to one conclusion now. We really can’t do that.”

She said Metro is committed to having rail reach the airport, but that planners are still unsure how it will happen. One less expensive option for Metro, she said, would be to simply have the airport connect its people mover to a scheduled-to-be built Crenshaw Line station at Aviation and Century.

“We need to do the environmental analysis of a range of options,” Welborne said. “It’s always fun to dream, but if you don’t have the funding for it, it’s difficult to implement it.”