A Gondola to Dodger Stadium? Half-Billion Sky Shuttle for Stadium Access in LA Soon

Imagine this: It’s a perfect Sunday evening, and Vin Scully Avenue becomes the ideal place for a stroll. Reeling with anticipation for upcoming games, excitement builds for players like Shohei Ohtani, who will rule the home team with an iron fist. Suddenly, a gigantic aerial tram hangs right outside the mammoth frame of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ ballpark. It’s exactly what the people of Sunset Boulevard are setting themselves up for, according to recent reports.

It looks like the Los Angeles Dodgers are on a luxurious roll of indulgence. They just secured the world’s best baseball player for a massive $700 million deal, and now they want to add a sky pod to their stadium. Of what seems like their next step in million-dollar ventures, what might have brought upon the need to have such an eccentric addition to adorn the Dodgers’ skyline?

A Gondola Journey: Los Angeles Dodgers to lift fans directly to the stadium

Given how fast-paced the game is, a willing spectator can be delayed by the busy traffic of the city to such an extent that by the time they reach the stadium, they might have already missed half of the game. A wise traveler always keeps an alternative in mind. If that alternative involves zero traffic and zero holdups, in this case, any Dodgers fan would welcome it into their schedule.

The previous owner of the Dodgers franchise, Frank McCourt, was notorious for dragging the team into bankruptcy with his impulsive spending and indecisive moves. However, one of his dreams might finally be seeing the face of reality. McCourt proposed aerial transportation to the team’s home venue back in 2018 because the City of Angels stays buzzing with activity almost 24/7.

Per reports, the Los Angeles Dodgers are part of a treasured location that ranks sixth in US News’s list of the most congested cities in the United States in 2022. Having an aerial tram would make one avoid such a disastrous state of the LA streets. Additionally, it would also make fans reach Dodger Stadium directly within seven minutes once they hitch a ride that comes every 23 seconds at Union Station. Regardless of the cost, the immediacy of the scenario is not the only reason why a skyride to the Blue Crew’s base sounds like such a good idea!

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A Solution to a Bigger Problem: The reason why this makes sense

Though several efforts were made to secure the luxurious transportation idea before, it never came to fruition. Five years down the line, environmental NGO Climate Resolve seems to have finally taken things into its own hands after McCourt gave them and the Los Angeles Metro a go-ahead with a personal endorsement. Why would an environment-centric organization take up a project like this, one might ask?

Apart from lessening pollution by getting fewer gasoline-run cars involved and substituting them with electricity-run gondolas and less congested traffic, several other factors in play make it sound like a foolproof plan. Los Angeles reportedly had a 95-hour delay in traffic last year. That counts up to $1601 in lost time per driver.

Now imagine the number of drivers a city with a population of over 3.9 million might have. Having a lightning-fast transportation option that can carry over 5000 people an hour would mean saving thousands and millions of taxpayers money and time—something that cannot be bought back by even the richest people in the world. But then again, how realistic is it for the Dodgers team to actually make it happen?

Is this feasible? Why is there opposition to the Los Angeles Dodgers’ agreement with the proposed plan?

Keeping aside the question of how the Dodgers plan to afford to spend half a billion dollars on aerial transport, what needs to be focused on right now is whether they will get the chance to do it or not. The project has been in the making for several years, so it isn’t as much a question of when as it is of how. A major part of the population of LA itself seems to be highly disapproving of the project, with an agenda that seems more than reasonable.

The neighborhoods between the proposed route of Union Station and Dodger Stadium include Chinatown and other locations in northeastern LA. The majority of the residents of that area are highly opposed to the idea of having a gigantic carrier of 40 people passing over their roofs every few minutes. But that is not the only issue.

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Reflecting on the carrying 5000 people an hour point that was initially projected by McCourt’s office, it has been deemed illogical by John Christensen. The Environment and Sustainability professor at UCLA made it clear that a maximum of 8% of people arriving at the games could use the Gondola, and only 2% of them will use it after the game.

Hence, there wouldn’t be as much of an environmental change to be noticed as has been claimed before. It could backfire by causing a significant increase in traffic issues if too many people tried to reach Union Station at the same time. What are the available options to make the Gondola happen, given that the team has so many hurdles to cross?

A possible way out: Options left for the Dodgers to fulfill the Gondola Dream

For starters, their plan of creating three new stations specifically for the SkyPod will highly cut down on any possible traffic hold-ups. As a part of the project, the LA ART has come up with a plan of its own, proposing a bridge to be formed between Dodger Stadium and Union Station that will prove to be highly beneficial for the locals, making way for less opposition.

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Considering the facts stated above and the recent news reported by Fox Sports, it looks like the Dodgers’ gondola dream is all set to come true anytime before the 2028 Olympics rolls out. Fans may have to wait for just a couple of years to begin flying to the games!