Coming Soon: Buses to Chavez Ravine?

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Some baseball teams have full transit plans…the Dodgers don’t even have buses

Councilmembers Ed Reyes and Eric Garcetti have been earning high marks from cyclists recently, and soon they might be earning high marks from baseball fans as well.

The councilmembers are backing a motion that will be heard at tomorrow’s Transportation Committee Hearing which would bring back public buses as an alternative to get to Dodger Stadium. The resolution calls on the MTA and Dodgers to work on re-routing existing bus routes by the start of the 2008 season (better hurry…). The new routes should also include a stop at Elysian Park, the newly opened Los Angeles State Historic Park.
The resolution also notes that the Dodgers have benefitted in the past from a coordinated effort to manage traffic in past baseball seasons.
The road to having transit serve Dodgers fans is going to be more difficult than just passing a resolution. Previous attempts to serve the Stadium failed do to lack of passengers and were canceled. Also, it should be noted that the Council isn’t proposing altering DASH routes, something that is within their power, but asking Metro to altar some of their existing routes.
  • Anonymous

    This is ridiculous. Dodger Stadium is event-driven, like the Hollywood Bowl, and as such, should have buses scheduled from park & ride points for game days, only. Altering existing routes to favor the stadium is silly.

    Run some shuttles from Union Station, from 7th & Metro on game day, but don’t make a bazillion-dollar fulltime committment.

    This is so typical of Garcetti, willing to spend tons of taxpayer money without measuring the cost/benefit.

  • ubrayj02

    I am definitely with anonymous on this one. The City of Pasadena has shuttles it lines up on game days from local train stops to the Rose Bowl.

    If the Dodgers had a publicly subsidized people mover to their gates on game days, they’d likely sell more tickets on days when the place isn’t filled to capacity.

    Maybe the City could work out some percentage split of the costs of operating X number of DASH buses on game day from Union Station, China Town, and 7th Street Metro to the top of Chavez Ravine.

    It would be worth it to create special bus-only lanes for the shuttle traffic.

    As a side note: I believe a funicular car system to Dodget Stadium was brought up at the January 29, 2008 Transportation City Council meeting in L.A. – what would stop this idea from happening?

  • Rob Dawg

    We’ve had season ticket to the Bowl for longer than some of you have been alive. We take the #653 from Chatsworth for the usurious price of $5 RT. It makes money. LACMTA blew the best opportunity on the planet in the last century bar none by not finagling the Hollywood Bowl station on the Red line. Dump us yokels off at Universal City and railroad us in the last few miles. Likewise from points south east and west. Heck, the west part alone would have earned LA the Expo line 10 years ago.

  • Bob Zwolinski

    Well, The MTA & LADOT ran various shuttles for many years. Only a small handful of folks rode them. So, they stopped them. It’s ridiculous to run this very expensive shuttle line when the buses are 85% empty!
    When you and yours are spending over $40.00 just to see a baseball game, you’re probably not going to take public transit.
    New York and Chicago are different. They built their ballparks 100 years ago adjacent to existing rapid-transit lines.
    Los Angeles city planners [but mostly politicians] in the early 60’s did not have such foresight and built the park in an out-of-the-way ravine at the same time when they were dismantling the last vestiges of our once-great rail system.

  • Bob Zwolinski

    The MTA & LADOT ran various shuttles for many years. Only a small handful of folks rode them. So, they stopped them. It’s ridiculous to run this very expensive shuttle line when the buses are 85% empty!
    When you and yours are spending over $40.00 just to see a baseball game, you’re probably not going to take public transit.
    New York and Chicago are different. They built their ballparks 100 years ago adjacent to existing rapid-transit lines.
    Los Angeles city planners [but mostly politicians] in the early 60’s did not have such foresight and built the park in an out-of-the-way ravine at the same time when they were dismantling the last vestiges of our once-great rail system.
    All-in-all, I wish the best for the shuttle. Let’s see if it succeeds this time.

  • Manu

    The problem is that the MTA continues to make projects half a$$. A perfect example is the new proposed Crenshaw line, were it will go from nowhere to nowhere. Check out the bottleneck blog post on it today, they make perfect sense. The MTA needs to spend the extra money a make the lines fast and efficient. Because if it takes the same time for me to drive my car, I might as well drive it.

  • Anonymous

    What seems to amaze me is, even if you used MTA to get to Dodger Stadium, there is no bus stop on Sunset & Elysian Park. The stop is either a block or two before or after Elysian.
    Do the Dodgers give MTA a %of the parking revenue for not having a bus stop at the corner? I have never understood why this corner does not have a bus stop.

  • Alex Thompson

    So where are you going with this Bob? Should LA planners continue to act short sightedly because their predecessors did so?

    I say, put in shuttles, and then figure out what is making those who ride them ride em. And then encourage that.

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