With the announcement last week that the NFL’s Rams — and possibly the Chargers — are relocating to the Los Angeles area, here’s an interesting motion that will go before the Metro Board of Directors this month. The motion calls for a task force to study ways to use the Metro system to get fans to and from Rams’ games.
The site plan for the Inglewood stadium.
That shouldn’t be an issue initially, with the Rams likely playing their 2016-18 seasons at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which is easily accessed by the Expo Line. Even better: the Expo Line is expected to open to Santa Monica in the first half of this year, making it easier to directly reach the Exposition Park and Coliseum via Metro Rail.
The trickier part comes when the Rams move to their new stadium in Inglewood on the site of the old Hollywood Park racetrack. The Crenshaw/LAX Line — now under construction — will have its Downtown Inglewood Station at the intersection of Florence Avenue and Market Street (here’s a map). The new stadium will be just south of the Forum, about a 1.5-mile walk from the Downtown Inglewood Station.
The motion was authored by Board Members James T. Butts (who is also Inglewood’s mayor), Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas and Duarte Councilmember John Fasana. It will be discussed at the Board’s Executive Management Committee at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday; a link allowing you to listen online will appear on this page when the meeting begins.
For those interested in the new stadium in Inglewood, here’s a presentation from last summer that runs through the plans and renderings.
Categories: Policy & Funding
Los Angeles needs to invest more on heavy rail… Especially for football games, Super Bowls and the olympics… Light rail is for light capacity.
Best thing the City of Inglewood could do is create a fun, attractive path from Manchester/Market to the stadium site. You do this two ways. First, you widen the sidewalks and install trees, bike racks, lighting, etc. Second, you create a development zone along Prairie, particularly near Manchester, with incentives to replace the parking lots and community-focused businesses (mortuary, day-care, motel, etc., which really could go anywhere else in the large city) with some restaurants and other fun places to hang out.
I’ll probably get slack for these comments from the community. But tax base is important. This is a golden opportunity to get some money into the city coffers that can do some real good throughout the city. Inglewood is a city with real potential, which has been wasted for years. Do some planning now, to turn that dreary path along Prairie and Manchester into a regional destination.
So, the inevitable consequence of the idiocy of following old Santa Fe right of way for new passenger rail lines. It was obvious 10 years ago that something big was going to happen at Hollywood park, one way or the other. Instead, we have the Crenshaw train zigzagging thru the cemetery and the light manufacturing – because that’s where a train went 150 years ago. Brilliant. Now we have a train that goes to within 1-1/2 miles of both the airport and the football shrine to itself. Scratch that. We have TWO trains that both miss that target.
Hey Hans —
I do think it’s worth mentioning that with the airport there will be a station at Aviation/96th that will allow riders to transfer to the people mover that the airport is building. Not the same as rail directly to the airport terminals, but I think an improvement over bus shuttles and the people mover is supposed to be quick.
Steve Hymon
Editor, The Source
Don’t forget the 5-car paralleled the Santa Fe tracks along Florence before being replaced by bus. The thousands that did go to Hollywood Park race track had no problems with shuttles to get the streetcar, this was when more people did take public transit than today.
Look at Phoenix and its APM between the LRT station and the Sky Harbor Airport.
Prior to the MTA “Race Track ” buses ran from numerous locations within the Los Angeles area to both Hollywood Park and Santa Anita. And while I’m not to sure about Hollywood Park those special buses replaced P.E. special trains to Santa Anita.
Lets be real, a spur from the politically correct Crenshaw Line to the New Stadium where two teams will be playing in addition to other events would be the answer.
But no, lets spend the precious dollars on light rail to places where horses and other animals out number humans.
When will the New Law go into effect banning the Shooting of Rabbits from moving trains be prohibited?
My concern is traffic on Century Blvd. at Crenshaw. Traffic around the holidays since the opening of the shopping center on south side of Century Blvd. (across from Target & Home Depot) is a nightmare! I have completely stopped shopping in my own neighborhood because of this.
A second left turning lane headed north on Crenshaw, turning left onto Century has been added to ease congestion. The problem is that for cars headed north there is one less lane and it can get pretty backed-up.
I can only imagine what traffic will be when this stadium opens. Prairie and Manchester will also become more congested as well.
The easiest, cheapest potential solution will be to add lots of secure bike parking and bike infrastructure between the Crenshaw and Green Line stations and the stadium – it’s an easy biking distance. Creating safer pedestrian paths will also be relatively low-cost and helpful; even if bus shuttles are added, plenty of people will still choose to walk (either because they don’t want to wait in line, or want to stop off at a tailgate halfway there before the game).
The ideal option would be a rail spur that gets passengers much closer to the stadium, but it’s probably more likely that bus shuttles end up being the prevailing solution. However, shuttles from the Green line or Crenshaw line aren’t going to hold nearly the capacity as the trains themselves, so there’ll be a huge bottleneck before and after games. (Ever stand in line for the bus shuttle back to Old Town Pasadena after a game at the Rose Bowl? Those shuttles also serve folks who parked at the Parsons structure, and a lot of people park there or use transit because there are relatively few roads in and out of the Rose Bowl, so the lines can get really long. I usually just give up and walk the whole way.)
Shuttles buses will also still likely have to wait in traffic (although maybe if they go in the same time as a new stadium it won’t take years to get drivers used to staying out of a bus-only lane, unlike the long transition that it took for the Dodger stadium lanes to be effective).
NFL Stadium parking is usually pretty expensive, and it’ll be interesting to see how scarce it is in such a built-out urban area. But regardless, this a huge “Last Mile” problem that will need to be addressed. Trains to and from USC games get super packed, but that’s because the train gets so close to the Coliseum that it easily outweighs the $25 cost to park nearby. For any of them to make an effective dent on the traffic surrounding games, Metro and/or the City of Inglewood need to come up with options that people will choose over paying $40+ to park, but that 1.5-mile distance and/or time waiting in lines might still be quite a hurdle for a lot of people (so, you can’t half-ass it on this one, or it won’t even make a difference).
There are Hills between Manchester & Prairie and La Brea & Florence (North of Downtown Inglewood.)
For Hollywood Park before the streetcars were removed. Shuttle buses ran between the race track and La Brea & Arbor Vitia with the 5-car streetcars queued up back to almost Century. They would fill (pack) a streetcar and send it on its way.
But our wisdom, there is no direct way using rail from Inglewood to get to downtown Los Angeles without transferring to either the Expo Line when using the Crenshaw Line or to the Blue Line with the Green Line. Neither the Crenshaw or Green Lines will have convenient stops to get to Inglewood.
OMG! Why is there so much whining about a 1.5 mile gap between TWO metro stations. Either walk or hop on a quick 5-10 min shuttle ride. Never heard so much complaining for such an insignificant short distance. It’s not that complicated.
Several shuttles will be needed as not all fans will be on the Crenshaw/LAX Line. A Green Line Shuttle and Possibly something connecting to the Silver Line as many USC fans currently use the Silver Line to get to football games.
The distance between the Rose Bowl and Memorial Park station on the Gold Line is the same distance as from the new Rams stadium to downtown Inglewood. And you don’t have to cross two freeways and walk up/down a hill to boot. The shuttle to the Rose Bowl gets huge turnout, and many people choose to walk the 1.5 miles between the Gold Line or Old Town and the Rose Bowl on a mild day.
PEOPLE MOVERS! 😀
There are two stations (Florence / La Brea and Florence / West) which are about same distance to Stadium Site (souteast corner of Praire Ave. and 90th Street) –about a mile away. The Rams should just stay at the Colisuem since freeway and rail are readily accessible north, south, west and east.
If the ridership numbers are there Metro should run shuttles from the Florence / West too.
How many people can fit onto a Crenshaw train? How many people can fit into the stadium? How many shuttles over how many hours would it take to move 5% of attendees by rail? By my numbers, it would take 90 minutes to squeeze 5% of the attendees onto trains. “Squeeze” being the operative word. This conversation is simply a non-starter.
For even more fun: If I had as much money as I needed to hire a fleet of buses going to the Blue line, to downtown, to the valley, to the expo line… every major collection point in Los Angeles with express service, and I wanted to move 50% of the game attendees by express bus within 30 minutes of the game ending, how large a parking lot would I need for the buses to load passengers?
The Green Line in Boston is a light rail and it does the job fine in bringing people to the Red Sox games at Fenway Park. Sure it’s packed, but every major city in the world with trains to key sports arenas are going to be packed on game day. The key would be building rail with direct access to the stadium with managed seat alignments to maximize standing room passengers to fit as many people into each rail car.
Angelenos need to grow up instead of whining and complaining about crowded trains. Every city in the world deals with packed trains whenever there’s a major event happening. LA’s not special or have “LA privilege” that you can escape from it. San Francisco has it, New York has it, Boston has it, welcome to the club, LA, so deal with it.
If being jammed packed like sardines into a train isn’t your style, go pay the extra money and Uber yourself to the new stadium.
I could sing this its so true and its written as if it were a tune I once hummed. 100% Agree : )
Please show your math for train access and then work out another calculation for how many cars are needed to move 95% of attendees by car? How many hours of traffic will be spent in colossal traffic jams before and after games? How much space ought to be wasted to accommodate cars for 5 hours once every 2 weeks?
I used to ride a jam packed 4 train to yankee stadium for 20-30 minutes, I’d do that a thousand times over before I spent 2 hours in a car trying to get from Inglewood to Culver City.
When the Rams were here previously and playing at the Coliseum rail service was provided via a spur for years. It’s not impossible and it would not be that complicated. Perhaps those at the MTA should take themselves to the on site library and read( in books) about how the largest transit system in the United States constructed and ran reliable service.
You are mistaking my post for anti-transit. I love transit. However, this stadium will not be a transit location. It will doomed to be a freeway location. The Boston Green Line has a current ridership of 229,000 people on a typical weekday. By contrast, the highest ridership on L.A. light rail is the Blue Line. It is at capacity with 70,000 boardings per day. So apparently Boston light rail is engineered for 3.5x capacity of L.A. light rail.
Fenway holds 37k people. I can’t find stats on how many board the Green Line, but I do see that there’s a heavy-rail commuter line and the Orange line that also take people to the park.
If it is on par with other NFL stadiums, I expect Hollywood Park to hold about 50k people (60% of what the Blue Line can move in an entire day). If 500 people leave LAX station on a train every ten minutes, that means I can get 10% of them on trains within 100 minutes. And I’ll need a whole lot of parking shuttles to do it…. If a parking shuttlebus can hold 100 people, that’s one bus arriving per minute for a total of 500 busloads. And again– that’s just for ten percent of the people attending.
So my point isn’t that using transit won’t be convenient. My point is that it is simply impossible– like trying to put a golf ball through a garden hose.
You are falsely assuming that light rail on either the Crenshaw Line and Green Line can not accommodate attendees at the new stadium due to their current ridership and that ridership on the Blue Line. If the MTA would integrate the entire light rail system into one where equipment is not isolated to their one line and instead can be used on any line the service could be easily provided with extra trains. From what some believe that there has to be a five minute headway at least is just limiting the capacity that a rail line can accommodate. Let me point out that the largest combined transit system in the United States had no problem running several lines each day on the same tracks sometimes with said lines operating trains bumper to bumper thru downtown L.A.
Yeah and when was that? Over six decades ago when LA had half the population of today with a lot fewer cars on the roads. What worked in the 1950s ain’t gonna work in the 2010s.
Metro and Inglewood needs to fill in that 1.5 mile gap. This is what happens when you don’t plan ahead, we keep getting transit built to places to nowhere instead of building it right to places people will go. What idiot bureaucrat was asleep at their desk collecting paychecks from taxpayers that they would miss this, let alone not even thinking about building transit to The Forum and Hollywood Park?
Is it possible that the stadium operators might consider running their own shuttle buses? That might be more efficient, and it would make sense for them to foot the bill rather than taxpayers.
Agreed. Game day bus shuttles with a dedicated lane would be great for the transit system and move people much more effectively than a SOV traffic jam on all lanes.
Don’t forget the Green Line Station to the South. You could run shuttles in a loop from Crenshaw DT Inglewood Station to the Stadium and continuing to the Green Line Lennox Station and then back to the stadium and Crenshaw Line. Two access points on the Metro system isn’t bad. It would give people more options to get to the stadium via public transit.
With the Green Line trains merging onto the Crenshaw line would their be a need for a shuttle to the south? However, it is something that needs to be considered.
“Specifically the Crenshaw/LAXLine’s Downtown Inglewood Station will be located within a few minutes’ walk from the new stadium.”
This is a sign of motorists mentality. I know that drive from Inglewood City Hall to the site is quick, but stop guessing. Something tells me this is going to result in a bus, which will be overcrowded, under serviced, and problematic.
I hope they get it right.