Native Angeleno who has worked in public, academic and special libraries, as well as museums and college instruction. I am responsible for maintaining the Metro Transportation Library website, all of our social media properties, and digitization efforts to bring more of our resources to our users whenever they need them. For more information, visit The Metro Library website.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Getting To Dodger Stadium: The Aerial Gondola And Escalators That Never Were


Image via Flickr by Atwater Village Newbie

The successful launch of the Dodger Stadium Express this month allows many people to not only fight traffic and reduce air pollution, but to take other public transportation to Union Station to take advantage of the shuttle service.

We wanted to take a look back at some of the other proposals for getting people up to Chavez Ravine to watch baseball. Twenty years ago, the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission released the 1990 Dodger Stadium Transit Access Study. It assessed various routes and modes of transportation, including shuttle buses, automated guideway transit shuttle, a light rail transit spur, a gondola tramway, and a pedestrian escalator!

Most of these options would have connected to the Gold Line Chinatown Station, but the gondola tramway, "similar to the Palm Springs aerial tramway...would utilize an aerial cablecar system that would travel from the future City North Area, via Radio Tower Hill in Elysian Park to Dodger Stadium."

The full-text document (45p. PDF) includes maps and illustrations.