![]() The company would reimburse Metro for costs associated with environmental review and public hearings, project officials said. It also hopes to sign a lease agreement to build a gondola stop at Union Station. The firm is seeking Metro’s approval on the project and help with an environmental impact report and community outreach. In a prepared statement, the Dodgers called the gondola “an important and innovative project” that would remove cars from neighborhood streets. McCourt sold the Dodgers in 2011 but retained half interest in the 130 acres of parking around the stadium, where the line would reach its terminus. The project is directed by Martha Welborne, Metro’s former chief planning officer.įrank McCourt’s investment firm would fund a portion of the project’s estimated $125-million cost and would seek private financing for the remainder. The company proposing the system was founded by McCourt’s son Drew. (Another? Elon Musk’s tunnel project, currently awaiting environmental clearance from the city of Los Angeles.) The gondola line, which could ferry passengers above the traffic-choked 110 Freeway, is one of several major infrastructure investments proposed in Los Angeles County that would not be built by Metro or funded by taxpayers. But those hills are perfect for a gondola line, which could easily scale inclines that defeat buses and light-rail lines, supporters say. The craggy topography of Elysian Park has long presented a challenge to transportation planners and Dodgers fans alike. In the United States, the systems are in use on New York’s Roosevelt Island and in Portland, Ore., where a cable car carries commuters between a waterfront neighborhood and a university. And in more than a dozen South American cities, such systems have become a crucial transit link between commercial centers and mountainous regions once connected only by congested, winding roads. They have become a tourist attraction in Taipei and London. Once relegated to ski resorts, gondolas are having something of a transportation moment. But this exists in over a dozen cities around the world.” It may seem like that because in Los Angeles, we don’t have this. “I am absolutely confident that this will happen,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti told reporters Thursday. But this time, backers say, the plan is for real. It’s an unorthodox proposal in a city where big ideas often flare up and die out - like a similar pitch for an aerial tram to the Hollywood sign. ![]() Now, a company funded by former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt has proposed a possible solution: a gondola lift that would whisk passengers from Union Station to Dodger Stadium in five minutes. Thousands of baseball fans have thought longingly of visiting Chavez Ravine without idling in snarled, rush-hour traffic in a car or on a bus, sometimes missing the first pitch.
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