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 ;)
Showing posts with label Los Angeles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Los Angeles. Show all posts
03 April, 2009
23 January, 2009
Baseball and the subway
For reasons I can't begin to comprehend, the baseball fan in me suddenly awoke from hibernation this winter, just in time for the debut of MLB TV. I swear, between that and Fox Soccer Channel, I've hardly been watching anything else.
So what's baseball got to do with trains? As you'll see, plenty.
For starters, living in Los Angeles, my favorite baseball team is the Dodgers. And watching all that programming on the MLB channel, I've learned a whole lot in a short period of time. One of the more pertinent factoids I've picked up is the origin of the name "Dodgers". Seems that about 100 years ago when the Dodgers were still located in Brooklyn, they had a few names before the Dodgers: the Bridegrooms and the Superbas among them. But their old neighborhood of Brooklyn was known for having lots of trolley lines crisscrossing the borough, and Brooklyn baseball fans would have to cross at least one trolley track on foot to get to Ebbets Field to watch the team play ball. Since the team's fans had to "dodge" all those trolleys to get to and from the park, they earned the nickname "trolley dodgers". Soon enough, the name was applied to the team, and it stuck.
And that got me wondering how many modern ball parks have rail access? It turns out, all but one in California.
One of the more recent examples is AT&T Park in San Francisco, home of the Giants. The park was opened in 2000 as a replacement for the rightly maligned Candlestick Park, and from the beginning was designed with easy access in mind. It's located in the Embarcadero, at the edge of downtown, and has a MUNI rail line passing right in front of it. (The park also features a bicycle garage, the first of its kind, but I digress.)
Another baseball park that has terrific rail access is Angles Stadium in Anaheim. You can get there via Amtrak or Metrolink (both lines share the same tracks), and it's a short walk across the parking lot to the stadium. Also, the Oakland Coliseum has long had easy rail access via BART's East Bay line. I used to take BART occassionally to see the A's play when I was a boy, and it was fun to be able to hop on the train, exit at the Coliseum station, and walk across the elevated walkway straight to the stadium entrance. The Athletics web site promotes public transport access to their park; the Angels site doesn't.
It's a quick and dirty solution, but I have to say it's pretty clever: the City of Los Angeles has found yet another way to re-purpose some older buses, and the Dodgers have found a way to capitalize on Dodger history. And it's something I'm looking forward to trying out this baseball season.
But there needs to be a more permanent alternative to driving to see the Dodgers play. (Here are a couple of nuttier ideas.) I sincerely hope that with Frank McCourt's ambitious renovation plan of Dodger Stadium, he manages to convince the City of Los Angeles to provide that permanent solution: a spur rail line from Union Station. Now that Measure R has been passed into law, maybe it's more likely than ever. Maybe I'll try asking Mr. McCourt myself.
So what's baseball got to do with trains? As you'll see, plenty.
For starters, living in Los Angeles, my favorite baseball team is the Dodgers. And watching all that programming on the MLB channel, I've learned a whole lot in a short period of time. One of the more pertinent factoids I've picked up is the origin of the name "Dodgers". Seems that about 100 years ago when the Dodgers were still located in Brooklyn, they had a few names before the Dodgers: the Bridegrooms and the Superbas among them. But their old neighborhood of Brooklyn was known for having lots of trolley lines crisscrossing the borough, and Brooklyn baseball fans would have to cross at least one trolley track on foot to get to Ebbets Field to watch the team play ball. Since the team's fans had to "dodge" all those trolleys to get to and from the park, they earned the nickname "trolley dodgers". Soon enough, the name was applied to the team, and it stuck.
And that got me wondering how many modern ball parks have rail access? It turns out, all but one in California.
One of the more recent examples is AT&T Park in San Francisco, home of the Giants. The park was opened in 2000 as a replacement for the rightly maligned Candlestick Park, and from the beginning was designed with easy access in mind. It's located in the Embarcadero, at the edge of downtown, and has a MUNI rail line passing right in front of it. (The park also features a bicycle garage, the first of its kind, but I digress.)
Another baseball park that has terrific rail access is Angles Stadium in Anaheim. You can get there via Amtrak or Metrolink (both lines share the same tracks), and it's a short walk across the parking lot to the stadium. Also, the Oakland Coliseum has long had easy rail access via BART's East Bay line. I used to take BART occassionally to see the A's play when I was a boy, and it was fun to be able to hop on the train, exit at the Coliseum station, and walk across the elevated walkway straight to the stadium entrance. The Athletics web site promotes public transport access to their park; the Angels site doesn't.
So Dodger Stadium is the only Major League park in California with no direct rail access. To address this shortcoming, the Dodgers organization partnered with the City of Los Angeles in 2008 and created the Dodger Trolley: one of Metro's older GMC coaches with an old-fashioned, cartooney trolley decal on the side. These buses have traditionally been put to a variety of uses in LA, shuttling people to places like the Hollywood Bowl and Griffith Observatory. The Dodger Trolley leaves Union Station every ten minutes starting 90 minutes before games, and runs for up to an hour after games to take riders back to Union Station.
It's a quick and dirty solution, but I have to say it's pretty clever: the City of Los Angeles has found yet another way to re-purpose some older buses, and the Dodgers have found a way to capitalize on Dodger history. And it's something I'm looking forward to trying out this baseball season.
But there needs to be a more permanent alternative to driving to see the Dodgers play. (Here are a couple of nuttier ideas.) I sincerely hope that with Frank McCourt's ambitious renovation plan of Dodger Stadium, he manages to convince the City of Los Angeles to provide that permanent solution: a spur rail line from Union Station. Now that Measure R has been passed into law, maybe it's more likely than ever. Maybe I'll try asking Mr. McCourt myself.
30 December, 2008
Walking tour of LA
Just so you don't think I created this blog as nothing more than a series of rants, I also plan to include examples of some very cool things to do by rail in LA. And the first of them is one of my most recent excursions.
My fiancée and I spent the Christmas holiday at home, one of those 'stay-cations'. We wanted to do things that someone visiting Los Angeles might do as a tourist. So on this particular day we set off on a walking tour of LA. We started out by taking the Red Line downtown; the instructions actually said to get off at Pershing Square. So after a 30-minute subway ride, there we were, on a rather chilly December morning, guide book in hand, ready for an adventure.
And it was an adventure! It was a self-guided tour; the booklet we'd brought had brief descriptions of each point of interest, and specific instructions on how to get from one place to the next. Among other things, we saw (drawing from a not-so-great memory here): the Angels Flight funicular, a rail system unto itself, incidentally; the Grand Central Market; the Oviatt Building; the Gas Company Building; the Biltmore Hotel and the Bradbury Building. We missed things like the Los Angeles Central Library because we ran short on time...we had an appointment to meet a horse. We honestly thought two hours would be enough time to see everything in the guide booklet, but were we ever wrong. We didn't realize that we'd want to spent so much time at each stop.
It was really fun seeing LA through the eyes of a visitor. We didn't imagine many locals have done such a thing. In fact, one person, overhearing us reading from the guide and talking about what we were seeing, asked us where we were from.
When we were finished, we wound just just about where we'd started, near the Pershing Square station. We descended the escalator (how can it be called an escalator when it's going down?), boarded the subway five minutes later, and road the train back to the North Hollywood station where we started.
This kind of activity would have been much more complicated if we'd had to drive and park somewhere, not to mention more expensive. Riding the Red Line made it simple, affordable and mostly fun. There was an odd-smelling person sitting a bit too near on the journey home. Otherwise, the train was clean and on time.
One final note: until very recently, the train operators on the Red Line would announce the station stops and transfer information themselves over the PA. I'd say about half the time they could be understood. But on this particular day, I noticed that Metro had employed a recording similar to that used on the Gold Line since its first day of operation. A big improvement, I say. Now "stand clear, doors closing" doesn't sound like "stand here, you're boring". Nice job, Metro!
My fiancée and I spent the Christmas holiday at home, one of those 'stay-cations'. We wanted to do things that someone visiting Los Angeles might do as a tourist. So on this particular day we set off on a walking tour of LA. We started out by taking the Red Line downtown; the instructions actually said to get off at Pershing Square. So after a 30-minute subway ride, there we were, on a rather chilly December morning, guide book in hand, ready for an adventure.
And it was an adventure! It was a self-guided tour; the booklet we'd brought had brief descriptions of each point of interest, and specific instructions on how to get from one place to the next. Among other things, we saw (drawing from a not-so-great memory here): the Angels Flight funicular, a rail system unto itself, incidentally; the Grand Central Market; the Oviatt Building; the Gas Company Building; the Biltmore Hotel and the Bradbury Building. We missed things like the Los Angeles Central Library because we ran short on time...we had an appointment to meet a horse. We honestly thought two hours would be enough time to see everything in the guide booklet, but were we ever wrong. We didn't realize that we'd want to spent so much time at each stop.
It was really fun seeing LA through the eyes of a visitor. We didn't imagine many locals have done such a thing. In fact, one person, overhearing us reading from the guide and talking about what we were seeing, asked us where we were from.
When we were finished, we wound just just about where we'd started, near the Pershing Square station. We descended the escalator (how can it be called an escalator when it's going down?), boarded the subway five minutes later, and road the train back to the North Hollywood station where we started.
This kind of activity would have been much more complicated if we'd had to drive and park somewhere, not to mention more expensive. Riding the Red Line made it simple, affordable and mostly fun. There was an odd-smelling person sitting a bit too near on the journey home. Otherwise, the train was clean and on time.
One final note: until very recently, the train operators on the Red Line would announce the station stops and transfer information themselves over the PA. I'd say about half the time they could be understood. But on this particular day, I noticed that Metro had employed a recording similar to that used on the Gold Line since its first day of operation. A big improvement, I say. Now "stand clear, doors closing" doesn't sound like "stand here, you're boring". Nice job, Metro!
My first blog
Hello, internet!
Ok, that was kind of lame. But then, I'm not a journalist. This happens to be (George Carlin hated that phrase) my first blog. I never felt compelled to write one before because I couldn't think of anything to write about that others might care to read. But I finally came up with something I feel passionate enough to spend time writing about...trains.
See, I'm a big train fan. I've ridden light rail, subways, commuter trains and high-speed trains, and I love them all. I've ridden trains in cities all around the world. And by all around the world, I mean several destinations in Italy, and Los Angeles, my home...and the Las Vegas Monorail, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't count.
Which brings me to the reason I created this blog.
It boggles my mind why we don't have a more thorough light rail and subway system. LA is a world-class city in many other respects; we have music, theater, fine arts, sports, great weather, and we're one of the top tourist destinations in the world. We even have a winery in the middle of the city. So I how is it that in the second largest city in the United States I can't take a train, say, to a baseball stadium or to the airport? I think what we have is a great start, but we need more...a lot more.
So the purpose of my blog is to be a place for me to write what I think of riding the rails in LA, as well as my ideas for what we're lacking. And I welcome comments and suggestions, too, especially from residents of other large cities that might have more, better, or just different rail transit solutions: what works, what doesn't, and why.
Ok, that was kind of lame. But then, I'm not a journalist. This happens to be (George Carlin hated that phrase) my first blog. I never felt compelled to write one before because I couldn't think of anything to write about that others might care to read. But I finally came up with something I feel passionate enough to spend time writing about...trains.
See, I'm a big train fan. I've ridden light rail, subways, commuter trains and high-speed trains, and I love them all. I've ridden trains in cities all around the world. And by all around the world, I mean several destinations in Italy, and Los Angeles, my home...and the Las Vegas Monorail, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't count.
Which brings me to the reason I created this blog.
It boggles my mind why we don't have a more thorough light rail and subway system. LA is a world-class city in many other respects; we have music, theater, fine arts, sports, great weather, and we're one of the top tourist destinations in the world. We even have a winery in the middle of the city. So I how is it that in the second largest city in the United States I can't take a train, say, to a baseball stadium or to the airport? I think what we have is a great start, but we need more...a lot more.
So the purpose of my blog is to be a place for me to write what I think of riding the rails in LA, as well as my ideas for what we're lacking. And I welcome comments and suggestions, too, especially from residents of other large cities that might have more, better, or just different rail transit solutions: what works, what doesn't, and why.
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