A group advocating for the protection of Los Angeles-area parks is suing the county’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) over the agency’s approval of an environmental impact report for a downtown, high-wire gondola project.
The Los Angeles Parks Alliance filed the lawsuit against the MTA March 25 in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The lawsuit alleges that the mile-long gondola project, connecting Dodger Stadium with Los Angeles’ Union Station, would cause irreparable harm to communities in downtown L.A., with particular environmental disruptions at Los Angeles State Historic Park.
The private project is being spearheaded by Los Angeles Aerial Rapid Transit and former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, who the lawsuit alleges has development plans for the current Dodger Stadium parking lots. The gondola transit project would reduce the number of parking spaces needed for that development, opening up more land for tourist or entertainment venues, according to the complaint.
“The station and aerial clearance for the gondola cabins running through the park’s airspace would unlawfully take almost two acres of the park for the benefit of a private development, impairing protected scenic viewsheds and high-value open space, removing more than six dozen trees and disrupting park programming, among other significant environmental effects not adequately addressed in the project’s EIR,” the lawsuit says.
The L.A. Parks Alliance also alleges that the MTA should not have been the lead agency approving the environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
“We believe that the city of Los Angeles should have been and should be the lead agency,” Jon Christensen, a founding member of the L.A. Parks Alliance and an adjunct assistant professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, told the Southern California Record.
The plaintiff’s lawsuit calls on project proponents to do another EIR that more fairly considers all the impacts to surrounding areas and conforms to CEQA requirements.
“The whole purpose of the law ... is to ensure that the public and decision makers are fully informed about the effects and impacts of projects, and that's not the case here,” Christensen said.
Plans call for a 100-feet-tall station to be built at the western entrance to the park, he said. In turn, 40-passenger gondolas would fly over the western section of the park and come as low as 26 feet above the ground, according to Christensen.
The gondola project would occupy a part of a state park that preserves natural, historical and cultural heritage of the region, including Native American settlement displays.
“So taking away the value of the park for a private transit facility we think is not only wrong and a huge impact ... but is illegal under the public resources codes of California,” he said.
Christensen also said that gondolas work well for ski resorts where they are constantly in use. “But they’re not great for surge travel like the beginning and end of a (baseball) game,” he said.
The Los Angeles City Council last month passed a motion to block approvals for the gondola transit project until traffic studies of potential alternatives are completed.
Los Angeles Aerial Rapid Transit has said the project would represent the first zero-emission transit link between Dodger Stadium and Union Station and would run during all Dodger home games and special events at the stadium.