A rendering of a proposed Dodger Stadium gondola project that would aim to ferry up to 5,000 passengers an hour from Union Station in downtown L.A. to the stadium. (LA Aerial Rapid Transit)

Gondola for the Dodgers

That’s Amaury News and Commentary

By Amaury Pi-González

Remember when the A’s talked about building a Gondola to transport people to their future new home at Howard Terminal? It was in January 2019, and it was met with many bad jokes, primarily by cynical A’s fans. Something similar is in the works for the LA Dodgers to alleviate traffic to the games at Dodger Stadium. The Los Angeles Aerial Rapid Transit gondola was proposed by Aerial Rapid Transit Technologies LLC, an entity created by McCourt Global.

The company’s CEO is Frank H. McCourt, who owned the Los Angeles Dodgers and the stadium from 2004 to 2012. Originally, the LA gondola was said it would cost $125 million. Still, after all the environmental studies (as usually happens in costly California constructions), the cost now looks like a half-billion dollars for the project.

The aerial system would get fans from downtown to Dodger Stadium in about seven minutes, from Union Station to Dodger Stadium. Up to 5,500 people per hour in each direction, which means that 10,000 fans could be transported to Dodger Stadium two hours before the start of a game.

Anybody that has attended games at Dodger Stadium has experienced the incredible amount of traffic, going to a baseball park that averages about 47,000 fans per game. Dodgers have led MLB in attendance for a few years now.

No city in North America has more automobiles than Los Angeles, so a Gondola to Dodger Stadium is a practical and it is not a joke, it makes sense. Coincidentally, as projects go, if approved, the gondola would take thousands of fans from Union Station downtown to Dodger Stadium in seven minutes, just in time for the 2028 Summer Olympics.

The gondola is planned to be inaugurated in 2028, the same year the Oakland Athletics plan to inaugurate their new ballpark in the Las Vegas Strip, but…without a gondola. Finally, and ‘for the record’, The City of LA to Dodger Stadium gondola was planned years before the Oakland A’s announced they wanted to have one for what was to be their new home at Howard Terminal.

Gondola Trivia: The original gondola has existed in Venice, Italy since the 11th century. It is estimated that there were eight to ten thousand gondolas during the 17th and 18th centuries, most over the canals of Venice. There are only 400 hundred in active service today. Most of them used by tourists.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the lead play by play announcer for the Oakland A’s Spanish radio network on 1010 KIQI San Francisco and 990 KATD Pittsburg and does News and Commentary at http://www.sportsradioservice.com