A Los Angeles City Councilmember introduced a motion on Wednesday, Jan. 24 that could halt the controversial aerial gondola project proposed to connect L.A.’s Union Station to Dodger Stadium.
Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez’s motion asks for suspension of all future approvals for the aerial tramway by the city of Los Angeles, which is a responsible party that must be consulted by the project’s lead agency, LA Metro.
Her motion questions the process, citing concerns from neighbors in Chinatown, Solano Canyon and Lincoln Heights over how closely the gondola cars would carry passengers over their roofs and backyards, noise pollution, and traffic to and from the gondola station parking lots.
The motion at City Hall is critical of an Environmental Impact Report released by Metro for not adequately addressing these and other environmental and economic impacts.
It calls for a comprehensive study of the traffic around the stadium and other alternatives to a gondola, saying the current study is 30 years old and outdated. She said in a statement that the project “is being considered in a vacuum rather than weighed against a menu of (traffic) solutions,” which some have said should include expansion and electrification of the Dodger Stadium Express shuttle.
“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,” said Hernandez in a prepared statement.
“Now, 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,” she added.
We have a responsibility to use and preserve public land for the public good.
This project would require using public land & airspace, and it would fly right over LA…
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