The Los Angeles County Metro Board of Directors voted to accept the environmental report associated with the projected aerial gondola to Dodger Stadium.

The fate of the gondola was temporarily in the hands of the Metro board, as it was tasked to review the project’s draft environmental impact report (EIR), hear from residents and make a decision on whether or not it would have environmental implications.

The board held on to the draft EIR for several months often going back and forth between its verbiage and asking for clarification on several issues that would affect the local communities.

This was one step in the L.A. ART goal of getting the gondola operating by the start of the 2028 Summer Olympics, as approvals must still go through California State Parks,  CalTrans and the Los Angeles City Council.

In late January, Los Angeles City Council Member Eunisses Hernandez relayed her continued concerns about the aerial gondola and submitted a proposal to stop the “flawed” project.

“The communities that surround Dodger Stadium already bear the burden of the traffic congestion and increased pollution that stems from an increasingly year-round schedule of events at the stadium,” Hernandez said. “With this proposal, Metro is asking them to absorb the impact of constructing a gondola that would fly just feet over their homes and fundamentally change the landscape of their neighborhoods without ever demonstrating that this is the most effective and efficient way to mitigate stadium traffic.”

With alternative transportation in mind, the Metro Board called for additional support to ease traffic to Dodger Stadium, including

“The Metro Los Angeles board voted to certify the fatally flawed Final EIR for Frank McCourt’s gondola to Dodger Stadium,” Jon Christensen, who is an adjunct assistant professor at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA and a leading voice for the ‘Stop the Gondola’ organization. “The Los Angeles Parks Alliance will now take that decision to court and ask a judge to send the FEIR back for a redo under CEQA. A judge will now have to do what the Metro board should have done today: uphold the law to ensure a fair and objective analysis of the impact the gondola would have on
Los Angeles State Historic Park and communities.”

Metro also set 30 conditions for the project in an attempt to benefit the affected Chinatown community, including offering unlimited free rides for residents, and a 10% market share to local businesses.

Should the gondola project not meet the conditions set by the Metro board, it reserves the right to nullify the use of Metro property.

A lawsuit was also launched by the L.A. Parks Alliance, asking a Los Angeles Superior Court to “invalidate” the gondola’s final EIR under the California Environmental Quality Act.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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