{"id":474459,"date":"2026-02-17T20:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T20:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/474459\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T20:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T20:22:09","slug":"here-today-gon-dola-2026-the-project-limps-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/474459\/","title":{"rendered":"Here Today, Gon-dola 2026: The Project limps on"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps unsurprisingly, L.A. Metro voted to approve the L.A. Aerial Rapid Transit project<\/a>, also known as the Dodgers Gondola project, after a\u00a0rowdy meeting reminiscent of\u00a0Parks and Recreation\u00a0on December 3<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Declarations from the uninformed aside<\/a>, it was a bit of an ask for the agency working with Zero Emissions Transit, the non-profit running the Dodgers Gondola project, to kill the project.<\/p>\n

The writing was on the wall when the vote on this project was placed on the Consent calendar at the Metro Board meeting. Consent calendars generally include noncontroversial items or those a governing body wants to vote on with little to no debate.<\/p>\n

While the Los Angeles City Council voted 12-1 to urge L.A. Metro to terminate the project in the weeks before the meeting, there was uncertainty about whether Mayor Bass would approve or veto the resolution, given that she sits on the Metro Board. We finally have an answer as to what she did: nothing.<\/p>\n

After the L.A. Metro vote, Mayor Bass gave a statement to the Los Angeles Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way the council feels is important to me,\u201d Bass told The Times. \u201cBut, if a member from that district is passionate about a project, then the other members are in support of that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is much more time for things to be worked out. I just did not feel that it was appropriate to stop it now.\u201d<\/p>\n

The above are certainly words in a sentence that would make Sir Humphrey Appleby of Yes, Minister\/Yes, Prime Minister<\/a> proud in how incomprehensible they are.<\/p>\n

The backers of the Dodgers Gondola project must still obtain approval from various local and state agencies before the LA City Council has the final say. The project was projected to cost $500 million in 2023; it is an open question how much it will cost now. While the Bass Compromise of 2024 states that no public funds will be used for the project, the project\u2019s financing plan has not yet been made public.<\/p>\n

Accordingly, it seems increasingly likely that Metro will use its bus fleet rather than the Gondola during the rapidly approaching 2028 Olympic Games, given the near impossibility of obtaining all required approvals and completing construction in time.<\/p>\n

As it stands, the project will limp on in the background as the 2026 Spring wears on until its next reckoning at a relevant agency.<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s September Remarks to LASEC<\/p>\n

As an aside, it is time to address comments by Magic Johnson that largely went unnoticed by the Dodgers fanbase before the recent rounds of votes on the status of getting to and from Dodger Stadium. Specifically, Johnson was a speaker at the 11th Annual Dodgers All-Access Gala, hosted by the Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment Commission (LASEC).<\/p>\n

Senior Editor of Dodger Blue Matt Borelli<\/a> first reported Johnson\u2019s comments back in September. Unfortunately, I could find no video of Johnson\u2019s comments to the LASEC, so we will have to rely entirely on Mr. Borelli\u2019s reporting:<\/p>\n

Dodgers part-owner and Los Angeles Lakers legend Magic Johnson recently conceded that the Dodger Stadium parking lots will likely always be an issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s so many memories about coming to this stadium,\u201d Johnson began in response to a fan\u2019s question at the 11th annual Dodgers All-Access event.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank God that we kept this stadium. You go to a lot of new ballparks, but they don\u2019t have what we have. It\u2019s special. You know who you\u2019re sitting next to. We\u2019re never going to solve the parking thing, so let\u2019s not talk about it. We can\u2019t solve it.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery minute that we\u2019re in the car, it\u2019s worth it when we get here and watch this game. Now, we all have the same issue going home, so we ain\u2019t going to solve that either. Don\u2019t ask me about those two situations. They haven\u2019t solved it since we\u2019ve been here, we\u2019re not going to solve it because we\u2019re the owners now.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, what would you rather have? A competitive team winning the division every year, or going home early? Getting to the park earlier, easier. I think I\u2019d rather have the team that\u2019s won our division 11 out of 12 years. Two World Series, been to the World Series four times. I think I\u2019d rather have that and I\u2019ll deal with the other things.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut when we go to other cities like New York and Atlanta, that traffic is bad too. Everybody thinks we\u2019re the only ones that have bad traffic. Like I said, I\u2019m going to take that as long as we\u2019re winning.\u201d<\/p>\n

[emphasis added.]<\/p>\n

For starters, even in the most charitable light, Johnson\u2019s statement about the parking lots is wrong and borders on nonsensical. By that logic, Johnson\u2019s statement, if hypothetically applied to other aspects of running Dodger Stadium, amounts to learned helplessness (and arguably negligence), which is unacceptable regardless of the circumstances.<\/p>\n

While I vehemently disagree with what Johnson said, if forced to play Devil\u2019s Advocate, I can see where he is coming from on a single point.<\/p>\n

Dodger Stadium has certain traffic issues inherent to its location and construction. When you build a stadium on a hill next to a residential neighborhood, with various bottlenecks of traffic on the hill, with freeway layouts that would not even pass muster in the computer game SimCity in a major metropolitan area, traffic is a given.<\/p>\n

However, simply saying you cannot solve it or saying fans and ownership should not talk about it, while implicitly supporting the Dodgers Gondola project by having a gondola car on stadium property for nearly three years now, is laughable.<\/p>\n

\"MLB:<\/p>\n

MLB: Dodgers vs Mets<\/p>\n

In the above hypotheticals, ownership would likely be pilloried by the press and the fanbase, and rightfully so. Moreover, we have a concrete example to the contrary; ownership <\/a>implemented subsequent remedial measures to prevent further falling concrete<\/a>, and, by all accounts, even with how loud Dodger Stadium was during the 2025 postseason, there were no additional incidents.<\/p>\n

Short of herculean and borderline impossible efforts by the City and County of Los Angeles, not to mention using multiple state and federal agencies, while Johnson does have a point about there being issues getting to and from Dodger Stadium, things can be done, provided there is buy-in from multiple stakeholders, including the citizen neighbors of Dodger Stadium.<\/p>\n

If this series of essays has had a fault, it has been being too focused on why the Gondola Project is generally a bad idea and less on alternatives or conversations that the city and team should be having. While the City of Los Angeles waits for the Gondola Project to reemerge into the public sphere, the next series of essays on this topic shall focus on certain unsaid truths, alternatives like Dodger Stadium Express, and what could and should be done about what most would say is the worst part about being a Dodgers fan: getting to and from Dodger Stadium.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Perhaps unsurprisingly, L.A. Metro voted to approve the L.A. Aerial Rapid Transit project, also known as the Dodgers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[5786,22360,219871,219870,219872,3031,2323,1055,8726,363,99,364,19632],"class_list":{"0":"post-474459","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-atlanta","9":"tag-dodger-stadium","10":"tag-dodgers-gondola","11":"tag-erick-w-rasco","12":"tag-l-a-metro","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-los-angeles-dodgers","15":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","16":"tag-magic-johnson","17":"tag-mlb","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-toronto-blue-jays","20":"tag-world-series"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}