Archinect - News

Dodger Stadium gondola plan gains LA Metro Board approval

2024-02-24T08:00:00-05:00

The LA Metro Board of Directors has given their final go-ahead for a controversial gondola project in Los Angeles that would offer an alternative transportation route from downtown Union Station to Dodger Stadium to baseball fans by the start of the 2028 Summer Olympics. The board voted unanimously in favor of the final version of the plan’s Environmental Impact Report on Thursday.

As was pointed out by LAist, the proposal still needs approvals from Los Angeles City Council, Caltrans, and California State Parks to begin construction. The Metro’s decision came with a steep set of 31 conditions, which include a fund for affordable housing plus marketing opportunities and other concessions directed to small business owners in Elysian Park and Chinatown.

The proposal is marketed as being able to transport a total of 5,000 people per hour on a 7-minute ride with three stations along a 1.2-mile path. The Dodgers say this will reduce traffic by 3,000 cars for each of their 81 home games pe...

Over $1 billion allocated to California’s transportation infrastructure

2023-12-19T12:11:00-05:00

The California Transportation Commission has announced the allocation of $1.1 billion for projects aimed at repairing and improving the state’s transportation infrastructure. The funding will be deployed to projects in areas including Los Angeles, the Bay Area, and San Diego.

In Los Angeles, $12 million will be used to upgrade bicyclist and pedestrian infrastructure on an 18-mile stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway between Redondo Beach and the Orange County line. Upgrades include Class II bike lanes, bus pads, crosswalk visibility enhancements, a rectangular rapid flashing beacon, and pedestrian push buttons, among others. Meanwhile, $6 million will be allocated to San Francisco BART expansion.

The single largest project to receive funding will be a $108 million development along Interstate 80 near the State Route 20 connector that will replace an...

Plans for new San Francisco Bay rail tunnels inch closer to realization

2022-09-26T17:35:00-04:00

The effort to engineer new train tunnels across the San Francisco Bay is gaining traction after the planning body responsible for overseeing the massive proposed Link21 infrastructure project unveiled conceptual maps detailing a key segment of the rail network on September 21.

The maps offer a look at two separate plans that would either divide the tunnel along regional/local service lines or combine them both into one corridor that connects Oakland and Alameda County to the Salesforce Transit Center and Mission Bay. They also included references to a "possible extension" of the BART system leading away from downtown to the west.

Image: Link21 courtesy sanfranciscoexaminer.com

The details released last week hint at a number of key future projects that have made headlines in the region for a number of years. Other than enhancing links to the larger regional Caltrans system, plans show an addition of new BART service routes along the contested I-980 corridor, along with four added stat...

Los Angeles keeps expanding its freeway "Autopia"

2018-02-23T17:42:00-05:00

If no one in 2018 would argue, as a young writer named David Brodsly did in 1981, that the "L.A. freeway is the cathedral of its time and place," or that it's the spot where Angelenos "spend the two calmest and most rewarding hours of their daily lives," as British architectural historian Reyner Banham put it with almost laughable enthusiasm a decade earlier, there's no doubt that both the practical and metaphorical meanings of the freeway continue to preoccupy Southern Californians.

Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne reflects on Southern California's ongoing love-hate relationship with its freeways.