First gondolas, and now an underground public transportation system, as entrepreneur Elon Musk is proposing a tunnel between Dodger Stadium and a yet-to-be-determined western terminus to relieve traffic to Los Angeles Dodgers games.
There’s no doubt getting to and from a Dodgers game can be an ordeal, especially if you time it to hit the beginning of the game: local streets like Sunset Boulevard are jammed, and rush-hour traffic on the 101 and 110 is already bad enough, even without the influx of Dodger fans.
So The Boring Company, headed by Musk, has proposed a zero-emissions underground transportation system from the Los Feliz, East Hollywood, or Rampart Village neighborhoods west of Dodger Stadium. The high-speed system would transport fans from the western terminus to Dodger Stadium in under four minutes, traveling underneath Sunset Boulevard and Vin Scully Avenue. The western terminus would be located at Metro Red Line station, providing further integration into the Los Angeles transit system. The cost: $1 each way.
According to The Boring Company, the tunnel will connect Dodger Stadium to the western terminus entirely beneath public right-of-way or land owned or leased by The Boring Company. The eastern terminus will be located on privately owned property at or near the Dodger Stadium parking lot. A unique design will include six major ventilation shafts and be totally illuminated. Once a final design is approved, it should take 14 or months to create the tunnel and outfit it to accommodate the transport skates.
Passengers would ride on high-end autonomous electric skates traveling at 125-150 miles per hour. Electric skates will carry between 8 and 16 passengers. The current plan calls for 1,400 fans (approximately 2.5 percent of Dodger Stadium capacity) per event to be transported for games and events like concerts. That number could eventually be increased to 2,800 per game or event (5 percent of Dodger Stadium capacity). Between games and events Dugout Loop would transport 250,000 people per year.
A very long description of the project can be found here.
The Boring Company proposal joins a plan from Aerial Rapid Transit Technologies LLC, which has proposed a gondola system running from Union Station in Los Angeles to Dodger Stadium, where a terminus would be located in the parking lot. And, of course, gondolas have also been discussed as a potential option for the Oakland A’s if they build a new ballpark at Howard Terminal, which is one of the sites that the team is considering in its ongoing search for a new facility.