MetroRiderLA

Image courtesy of xero79.

The dust has settled from the Dodgers historic reunion with the Los Angeles Coliseum this past weekend. Over 115,000 people showed up for this game, and many of them were hoping that the mass transit alternatives offered by both Metro and the Dodgers would spare them the parking and traffic nightmare they’ve grown accustomed to at Dodgers games. According to the L.A. Times, 35,000 people showed up at Dodger Stadium hoping to take advantage of the shuttles to the Coliseum provided by the Dodgers. Unfortunately, the shuttles turned out to be a colossal failure. Apparently most of the shuttles were just that, smaller van-like buses that could hold a very limited amount of passengers, and according to people who were there, the whole process was very chaotic and unorganized. Some fans were still stranded at Dodger Stadium while the game had been going on for an hour some six miles away. These people will likely never attempt to go to a baseball game without a car ever again.

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For this special edition of Transit Oriented Weekend we bring you transit directions to the historical L.A. Coliseum for the Dodgers vs. Red Sox game where over 115,000 fans will be congregating in what’s sure to be a fantastic mess if you are in a car. This is why mass transit was invented.

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The above Google Map shows the various bus lines that serve the L.A. Coliseum with links to the timetables from the Metro website. Remember to look at the Saturday schedule on the timetable. Used in conjunction with the Metro Advanced Trip Planner you should be able to find your way to the Coliseum without a car, no problemo.

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Image courtesy of mrjerz.

Dodger Stadium has long been hailed as one of the least car free friendly/public transit accessible ballparks in the nation, especially in comparison to their NL West rivals, the Giants and Padres. The stadium could’ve been built with the beauty of Elysian Park in mind but instead it was decided by the parlance of the times to destroy any sense of connection to the city by not only ruining said park and paving it over with one of the largest parking lots I’ve ever seen for a sports arena, football stadiums included, but by facing home plate towards a pointless hill rather than the lights of downtown—the lights of the city we all proudly call home.

Obvious complaints about the terribly car-centric 1950’s planning aside we all are still wishing and hoping something in the McCourt world changes for the good of us non-drivers and therefore, the city. But $15 a car in a full parking lot of 16,000 automobiles on 21 terraced lots is understandably hard for him to turn down. My dream would be for a trolley to travel from the Gold line China Town station up and around the stadium and down to Sunset, but that dream is far off and the season is almost here. Streetsblog puts it best when summing up LADOT’s uselessness on the subject:

Major League Baseball might be in Spring Training, but the LADOT’s excuse machine was in mid-season form. The Department seemed uninterested in exploring transit options, offering a variety of excuses ranging from “it’s difficult to get buses up the hill” to “there are limits on how much the Dodgers can kick in because of FTA regulations” to “shuttle service connected to existing routes could cost up to $200,000.”

So here we are everyone. The Golden season of the beloved, even if wavering, Dodgers, starts this Saturday with an exhibition game at the Coliseum against an equally storied franchise, the Boston Red Sox.

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Via a comment on Streetsblog LA’s recent post about bike parking at Dodger Stadium I found this awesome Streetsfilm about free valet bike parking at the AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants:

I was shocked to find out that over half the people who attend Giants games get there without a car. I bet under 1% of Dodgers fans get to games without a car. The AT&T Park’s website lists public transit directions before car directions in the Getting To The Park section. The Dodgers website, on the other hand, has its own special mini-site dedicated to parking with FAQ’s, safety tips, traffic info, and other such crap that would be irrelevant if they made it easier to get to the stadium without a car. Pathetic.I wonder what kind of overall cost savings (internal and external) the ballpark and stadium sees by having more that half the people attend games without a car.

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