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[tags]los angeles, dodgers, baseball, los angeles angels of anaheim, transit[/tags]
Only drivers can sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” to see the national pastime in Chavez Ravine.
Credit: Wikipedia
Los Angeles Dodgers owner and parking lot tycoon Frank McCourt stunned Los Angeles with his announcement to raise Dodger Stadium parking to $15, and maybe deliver improvements so that the venue isn’t more than half-empty after the seventh inning. Besides the price hike, drivers now have to leave the same gate they entered in, and more parking staff will be there to hold the drivers’ hands — hopefully only figuratively.
Meanwhile, transit riders will not see the return of the highly successful shuttle that ran between Union Station and Chavez Ravine a couple of seasons ago. The best they could do is enjoy one of the best urban hiking opportunities by walking over a mile up a steep hill from Sunset Boulevard. Will Campbell of Metroblogging LA says the transit solution may come down the road, though no one should hold their breath.
Or, save the $15 or sore calves and take the train to the ballpark. See Los Angeles’ other baseball team, the Los Angeles Angels.
Angels Stadium is the home of the Anaheim Station, served by Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner and Metrolink 7-day service on the Orange County Line. Now, taking the train to the station might result in not having another train on the way back. If that may be the case, Greyhound’s Anaheim station is about 1 mile away from the stadium, and it has very frequent I-5 bus service. The Santa Ana station, at the city’s train station, is another pick-up point. Yet another option for getting back to Los Angeles is Metro Express Line 460. The end of the line is at Disneyland, and it is also about a mile west of the stadium. Orange County Transportation Authority Line 50 runs on Katella Avenue, all the way to Long Beach in the west, if that needs to be an option. This connects to 460, and a transfer to Line 47 goes to the Greyhound station. Also, Orange County’s Taxicab Administration Program has a list of licensed cab companies to call.
Maybe the Los Angeles Angels can play to baseball fans’ angst and use train access, perhaps special event trains and ticket packages, to lure them away from that other Los Angeles team, the choke artists of Chavez Ravine.
Discussion
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Is there no better way to get there? I thought you might be able to walk from Chinatown without negotiating a huge hill, but frankly, I can’t tell. I put in an e-mail to them in December asking what their plans were with the shuttle - I guess this is the answer.
This so sucks, I love baseball, and going to the Angels is hardly an option, walking a mile to iffy transit options is really a poor idea when in a wheelchair. I considered it once, but it just looks like a fantastically bad idea.
I loved going to games in New York (B,D,4 to The House That Babe Built), Boston (8, 19, 47, or commuter rail), and Chicago’s Wrigley (red line), and I was really looking forward to a stadium with more than 37,000 seats in hopes of getting tickets more frequently…
Agh. I’m not a huge baseball fun, but certainly wouldn’t mind going to a few games if they were easily accesible, unfortunately that’s simply not the case. The few times I’ve been to Dodgers games (in a car) it’s just been a nightmare when everyone is leaving. You wonder why the seats empty before the game is done… everyone is trying to avoid the inevitable traffic jam. Likely that wouldn’t happen if there were decent transit options.
And after a recent trip to San Diego and seeing how accessible and convenient the Petco Park is, I feel an extra pang of pain when I consider the Los Angeles situation.
i think it’s more like 57,000 seats in that gargantuan though less than 37K will be filled for most games partly because of a huge lack of transit to get to it and the nightmare that is dodger post game traffic. leaving that place is mind numbingly terrible. the fact that there’s no shuttle that connects on sunset at elysian to take you to the game from local bars/restuarants and back there after the game is just… well its just not baseball to me. of course, there are hardly any sports bars (if any) on that strip of sunset, and please no one correct me with “the shortstop” because that’s the farthest thing from a sports bar. this is a huge reason why i was hoping against hope that the Field Operations plan for the cornfield and elysian park, including dodger stadium, would win. LA would do well to take a page from san diego, chicago (cubs), st. louis, cincinatti, boston, nyc (yankees), tampa bay, denver (rockies), pheonix (diamondbacks), san francisco, houston (i could go on for some time), and realize that a ball park that is a part of the city and not hidden away in some ravine that’s impossible to get to or build around, creates an endless draw of people and business’. and even if the dodgers are to forever be in the ravine, LA should take the initiative to make it more accessible for such improvements. adding a shuttle (to become a trolley) that connects sunset to the park as well as downtown to the park will create an explosion of business along those strips like those many other ball park friendly cities have done.
but i digress, i’d settle for just a shuttle from union station at this point. sadly, no one in the dodger organization seems to care.
and as for the angels… well i can’t really root for an american league team, but i’ve been to a few games and they’re a good time, however getting back without that train would seem like a huge pain in the ass. why that can’t be worked out with such things as you mentioned, package tickets and wut not, is beyond me. i’m sure if metrolink would keep it available for just weekend games and did some heavy cross promotion with the angels it would pay off. but wut do i know, i’m a cubs fan.
Tyke: the 37k reference was from my life in Boston, where Fenway Park is so small that you practically have to be a Brahmin to get tickets.
I get that Dodger Stadium will never be Yankee Stadium, where the vast majority of people take the train. But man, at least make it available, even if it’s just a messy shuttle from Union or Chinatown.
This one is getting an angry letter to my county supervisor. cc’d to the MTA and the Dodger organization.
I talked with a Columbia University transit professor a few years back for a paper I did on New Yankee Stadium. Turns out over half of visitors to Yankee Stadium still come by car. Wow wow wee wow.