Dive Brief:
- The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) announced it has received an unsolicited proposal to build an aerial tram — also known as a gondola — between Union Station and Dodger Stadium, home of MLB's Los Angeles Dodgers.
- Aerial Rapid Transit Technologies, funded by former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, submitted the estimated $125 million proposal. The gondola, which could whisk passengers by air between the sites in five minutes, could be operational by 2022, according to the Los Angeles Times.
- Metro has 60 days to perform an initial review of the gondola proposal, just as it must with all unsolicited proposals. The agency can then choose to advance the proposal to a secondary review. "I am absolutely confident that this will happen," Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti told the newspaper. "It's not actually crazy."
Dive Insight:
The gridlock problem is so bad in Los Angeles that the city earned the dubious honor of being the world's most congested city, according to a recent study.
The gondola plan announcement's timing probably smarts a bit for the Dodgers' MLB rivals the Oakland Athletics, which three weeks ago revealed their own plan to explore installing a gondola to get its fans to games. But Aerial Rapid Transit Technologies didn't steal the Athletics' gondola idea because Los Angeles city officials previously floated it for other parts of the city. For example, the concept surfaced in 2017 as a way to get people to and from the landmark Hollywood Sign.
A number of cities around the world have proposed large-scale gondola systems in recent years, but few have come to fruition besides the one in Portland, Oregon and another on New York's Roosevelt Island. Gondolas most often are suggested as transportation modes that easily take people over obstacles, such as elevation changes, or in the case of Roosevelt Island, New York's East River.
In that regard, a gondola system could serve Los Angeles well, as it could transport passengers over the city's hilly terrain. The proposed Dodger Stadium tram also would take passengers over the notoriously congested 110 Freeway.
Although municipalities traditionally devise their own projects or hire a contractor to do so, Los Angeles instated a system by which private sector companies can submit unsolicited proposals for municipal improvements that it can reject or adopt. The city has taken on a handful of projects this way.
Private companies tend to be viewed as experts in their fields and thus are often better suited for devising concepts and setting them in motion than local governments, which often don't have adequate resources or depth of knowledge to carry out specialty projects. The gondola system is that type of project.
The Dodgers gondola was proposed by a company that specializes in this mode of transportation. Plus, because it would be privately funded, the plan should be more attractive to the city.
Although Los Angeles receives many unsolicited proposals, this one could stick as evidenced by Garcetti revealing the plan at a Metro board meeting. "This exists in over a dozen cities around the world," the mayor told the Los Angeles Times.