Alas, friends, the time has come to bow our heads and pay silent tribute to the Dodger Trolley.
Yes, the half-baked solution to traffic in and out of Dodger Stadium has gone the way of the Dodo, but I can't find a single news story announcing it. There are plenty of articles from January with headlines like "Dodger Trolley on the ropes", or "Dodger Trolley drops into money pit". (I've linked one such article, which includes a PDF copy of a letter from LADOT to the LA city counsel summarizing the problem with funding the service for an entire year.) But the only way I've been able to confirm its demise is from the Dodgers' own web site. And even there, the Trolley is conspicuous by its absence. The Dodgers webmaster has quietly removed all references to the Trolley from the site.
Apparently, the city of Los Angeles doesn't want to continue paying for the service, and the Dodgers don't want to start. From my point of view, it seems cheap on the both their parts. After all, it's not even three miles from Union Station to the ball park. And in the larger picture, $600,000 doesn't seem like a large hit on the city's budget. Hell, if money was such a big problem, they could have considered charging for it. I would have considered paying $1.25 one way, even without the drivers honoring a Metro day pass.
On the other hand, the Trolley had one fatal flaw. It had to go into the parking lot of Dodger Stadium, using the same lanes as the cars. Even though I never took the opportunity to use the service, I've read at least one blog entry that said that having to wait in all that traffic wasn't worth it. And on that point, I'm forced to agree. The whole point of public transit is to provide an viable alternative to driving. But unless there was a dedicated, bus-only lane so that the Trolley to skirt around automobile traffic entering and exiting the park, it would indeed not seem worth the effort.
The Dodger Trolley was a novel idea, and I wanted to be more enthusiastic about it. But I think it could have been executed better so I'm not surprised it failed. LA's transit services aren't as broad as they should be, and the history of Metro's Orange Line (see my earlier blogs) has shown that political support for transit in this city is spotty. Ultimately, it was a band-aid on a much larger problem, and underscores the need for a more permanent (meaning rail-based) transport system in and out of Dodger Stadium. And since the Dodgers organization has made it quite clear that the resposibility for that transport system lies at the feet of the city, Dodger fans will have to petition City Hall or the county for a commitment to make it happen.
And since I spend so much time blogging about it, maybe it's about time I got off my butt and started making some phone calls ;)
