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The contested plan to build an aerial gondola tram line from downtown LA to Dodger Stadium has been placed on hold after city council members voted last week to halt the Los Angeles Aerial Rapid Transit (LA ART) for the time being. Local outlet ABC 7 was first to report on the council’s decision... View full entry
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... View full entry
On Monday, Jan. 9, [Frank] McCourt scored a court victory when Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff sided with proponents. Beckloff rejected a challenge to the unusual relationship between McCourt’s private company and the county’s public mega transit agency, LA Metro, which was struck without competitive bidding. — Los Angeles Daily News
The former Dodgers owner was behind the leadership team that had been selling the project under the guise of environmental concerns (the scheme does reduce traffic by about 3,000 cars for each of the stadium's 81 home games) after cutting an alleged sweetheart deal with Metro Chief Phil... View full entry
According to the environmental study, maximum capacity on the gondola system would be 5,000 passengers per hour, with an estimated end-to-end trip of seven minutes. Admission to the system is intended to be free with a ticket to a Dodger game, and rides would otherwise be set at the same price as a Metro fare. — Urbanize Los Angeles
The 1.2-mile-long system will be supported by three 195-foot towers and include stops at the stadium, Chinatown, and its origin point in Union Station. The three proposed stations will vary between 74 and 98 feet in height and between 174 and 200 feet in length. Johnson Fain is reportedly one of... View full entry
The group behind LA's proposed gondola project that would run from Union Station downtown and terminate at Dodger Stadium has revealed new images and a strategic partnership for a project many in the area fear could be used as a tool for gentrification. Earlier in the week, the Los Angeles Aerial... View full entry
“It’s just another way that we can’t own our neighborhood and feel safe and quiet here because literally you have something flying over your house all day long, forever, I guess.” said Tany Ling, a singer who offers private lessons at the home she and her sister bought in 2012.
McCourt entities are buying up properties in the neighborhood, but the Lings don’t want to move. They started StoptheGondola.org to fight the project.
— The Los Angeles Times
Frank McCourt, who owned the Los Angeles Dodgers from 2004 to 2011, began proposing the $125 million project back in 2018. The initiative has come up against stiff resistance, especially from those associated with the Los Angeles National Historic Park, which abuts Chinatown. Previously on... View full entry
By 2025, commuters near the Paris suburb of Creteil should have a new way to get to work: the French capital’s first-ever public transit gondola. The new aerial tramway, which cleared its pre-construction feasibility studies this week, will be called Cable A, and will link several outlying but populous neighborhoods in Paris’ southeastern suburbs to the terminus of Metro line 8. — Bloomberg CityLab
Cable A will travel a distance of 2.8 miles with five stations along its route. It was first proposed in 2008 as a cheaper and more practical alternative to conventional transit lines, which would require extensive engineering at the site. The gondola only needs space for the pillars that... View full entry
The company proposing to build a gondola from Union Station to Dodger Stadium announced Thursday that it has settled on a route that would take the aerial tramway generally above Alameda Street through Chinatown and include a station at the foot of Los Angeles State Historic Park. — Los Angeles Daily News
Three years after first appearing in the Archinect news, Los Angeles Aerial Rapid Transit has revealed a more detailed outline for its proposed gondola system that could shuttle thousands of baseball fans from Los Angeles Union Station to Dodger Stadium on game days. Image: Los Angeles Aerial... View full entry
Progress on Los Angeles's very own aerial tramway has made some headway as the City of LA's Department of Recreation and Parks prepares a feasibility study on the project. Intending to provide increased access to Griffith Park and alleviate urban congestion, the Aerial Transit System for Griffith... View full entry
Israeli authorities have approved a plan to build a cable car to the Western Wall, one of the holiest sites in the Jewish world, by 2021.
It’s the first phase of what proponents envision as a fleet of cable cars crisscrossing the locus of sacred sites known as the Holy Basin.
— The New York Times
NYT architecture critic Michael Kimmelman explains the controversial plan for a cable-car network, envisioned to connect significant Jewish religious sites in Jerusalem while bypassing Palestinian neighborhoods, and how the concept contributes to a "Disneyfication" of the Holy City as much as... View full entry
As Los Angeles officials ponder ways to cut down on traffic in and around Griffith Park, an engineering firm hired by the city is analyzing the pros and cons of installing a gondola or similar aerial transit system that could ferry riders in and out of the park. [...]
City leaders ordered the study last year, after reviewing a list of 29 recommendations from an outside consultant brought in to analyze traffic issues in the communities surrounding the 4,511-acre park.
— Curbed LA
There's no shortage of aerial tramway schemes in Los Angeles these days. Pitched as possible measures to alleviate specific traffic hot spots, proposals for gondolas running between Dodger Stadium and Union Station, or up to the Hollywood Sign, and now along a number of potential routes in... View full entry
Metro CEO Phil Washington announced Thursday that the agency had signed a letter of intent with a company called Aerial Rapid Transit Technologies that plans to build an aerial tram running between Union Station and the stadium.
The letter will allow the agency to begin negotiations with the company in order to allow the proposal to move forward.
— Curbed LA
That crazy-sounding plan to shuttle thousands of baseball fans from Los Angeles Union Station to Dodger Stadium on game days has become slightly less crazy with Metro's decision to take a closer look at the lofty transportation scheme proposed earlier this year by Aerial Rapid Transit... View full entry
[Warner Bros.] would foot the bill for an aerial tramway to transport visitors to and from the Hollywood sign, starting from a parking structure next to its Burbank lot.
The effort, dubbed the Hollywood Skyway, would cost the studio an estimated $100 million, according to a person close to the company who was not authorized to comment. The tramway would take visitors on a 6-minute ride more than 1 mile up the back of Mt. Lee to a new visitors center near the sign [...]
— Los Angeles Times
Several cable transport solutions are being proposed for popular Los Angeles landmarks right now: besides the gondola system that could connect Dodger Stadium with Union Station, the idea of an aerial tramway carrying visitors up to the Hollywood Sign has been brought back to life by media giant... View full entry
London Eye designers Marks Barfield Architects and Davis Brody Bond have created a new aerial cable car for Chicago. The plans, which are being sponsored by Lou Raizin and Laurence Geller CBE, have yet to gain approval from any official city agency, but in the meantime here are a few... View full entry
Imagine a hospital on top of a mountain. How would doctors and patients get in and out? In Portland, Ore., commuters don't have to drive up a twisty, two-lane road to get there. Instead, they glide up 500 feet in the air in a gleaming silver gondola.
Portland's aerial tram connects the south waterfront down near the river to the Oregon Health and Science University on top of Marquam Hill.
— npr.org
