New Clippers arena gets backing from Inglewood City Council (ESPN)
The Council agreed Thursday to enter into an exclusive negotiating window with the Clippers for a new arena that would be located near the intersection of Century Boulevard and Prairie Avenue — basically south of both the Forum and the Rams/Chargers football stadium that is under construction.
Will it happen? Hard to say. The Clippers have to share the very transit-friendly Staples Center with the Lakers, Sparks, Kings and other events and aren’t super happy about that. But building and funding new arenas is never easy.
A couple of maps below — one shows where the new arena may be and the other map shows the location of the Green Line and Crenshaw/LAX Line relative to the site.
The Green Line’s Hawthorne/Lennox Station looks to be about 1.5 miles from the arena site, whereas the Crenshaw/LAX Line’s Downtown Inglewood Station would be about 1.8 miles distant.
Not an impossible distance, but certainly not as close as Pico Station (served by the Blue and Expo Lines) is to Staples. The Metro Board last year asked for a study for different ways that the Metro Rail system could be better connected to the new NFL stadium, which is expected to open for the 2020 season. Bus shuttles seem like one obvious answer.
What’cha think basketball fans? Do you want the Clippers in Inglewood, DTLA or somewhere else?
New plan takes shape at Bergamot Arts Center (Urbanize LA)
Plans continue to evolve to add gallery space, offices and a hotel at Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station — which is steps away from an Expo Line station. The big parking lot in the middle of the current configuration would be used for some of the new buildings. Seems like a wise place to develop.
Trump Administration backs away from challenge to California’s car emission rules (LAT)
U.S. EPA Chief Scott Pruitt said Thursday that the agency doesn’t intend to take away California’s ability to set tougher vehicle emission standards — something the state does to help battle smog.
The Dutch have solutions to rising seas. The world is watching. (NYT)
Parts of the Netherlands are at sea level or lower. Cool story and pics about some of the infrastructure the Dutch have built (a parking garage that can serve as a reservoir) or will be building to deal with water surges courtesy of bad weather and climate change.
Categories: Transportation Headlines
The bus service from Union Station to dodger stadium is terrible, even with dedicated lanes!
Metro does need to work with both the owners to get a rail line closer to the two areas. Also, remember that the Rams stadium isn’t just a stadium, it will have retail, housing and entertainment areas-kinda of like Old Town Pasadena. So, it would be smart of Metro to work with the two owners to build an rail extension from both the Green and Crenshaw lines. But, doing the smart thing has never been something Metro has been good at!
Metro could build a spur on the Crenshaw line and another spur on the Green line so the trains can travel north/south on Prairie to service the stadiums.
Like the subway, light rail lines should have alternate routes. It’s not to late to connect the Expo Line with the Crenshaw Line, just some additional engineering and construction that should have been accomplished originally. There is a track connecting the Blue Line with the Green Line. That infrastructure needs to be upgraded. A integrated system is a complete system. Coupled with elevated tracks from both the Green Line and Crenshaw Line into the stadium area would both facilitate the transportation of fans but also reduce traffic and needed parking in the Inglewood area.
The MTA is operating a highly computerized rail system that should not be limited but instead prioritized in it’s ability to run trains closure together instead of further apart. Both the Pacific Electric and L.A. Railway, predecessor companies, ran on sight alone safely with far more trains and routes than what the MTA currently operate or even plan to operate with each systems tracks interconnected with each of their lines. Pacific Electric trains going to Newport Beach could also be used for Rose Bowl service or service to Redlands. L.A. Railway trains could be used on Vermont Ave. or Broadway. There were no isolated lines as we see with the MTA.
At this point, adding a junction would be difficult (the underground station has been excavated), time consuming and very expensive — and may not make that much sense given that one key Measure M project will extend the Crenshaw/LAX Line to the north.
Steve Hymon
Editor, The Source
Steve, your great at supplying excuses why the system should be segmented and how it would be so difficult to solve another design flaw. But you still have not provided an answer to the question why a major east-west travel corridor grid locked almost 24/7 that at one time had a freeway route designed and approved has not been addressed as a proposed light rail route or any other major transit improvements. Major commercial development such as Century City has taken place previous to and since the cancelled freeway was originally approved yet no alternative has been provided. Citing the Purple Line and Expo Lines makes as much sense as claiming the Line 218 over Laural Can. will solve the grid lock on the 405 Freeway.
Extending LAX’s people mover to the Entertainment center of Inglewood should be considered. I think a street car system around Inglewood should also be considered. The owners of the Forum, the Rams and the Clippers should all contribute to the cost of the system.
WHAT? Extending an lower capacity, LAX oriented people mover one mile east makes Absolutely No Sense. Not even the 1% will be flying in to see Rams and Clipper games.
My above recommendation stands – dedicated bus lanes can be implemented ASAP and will work! I’m sure the sports owners could be persuaded to ‘kick in’ for expansion of Metro’s fleet.
One thing at a time, and no ‘pie in the sky’ (polite words) please.
Mike F, is correct. Start planning for Orange Line type articulated buses in dedicated lanes with Traffic Officers keeping out general vehicles both pre and post events at the new stadium.
I was always a bit torn about this since the football and now basketball venues were never near any transit to begin with and would require an awkward shuttle bus (most likely) once the games begin. It’s Dodger Stadium redux, in 2017. Then, the 7th/Metro station is horribly congested as is and I’m not sure that station can take much more capacity especially once the Regional Connector opens. It should have been a condition for these franchise owners to build a people mover and/or commit to shuttle service before allowing them to go forward.
Metro needs to do better about building ridership incrementally.
First, run frequent Rapid buses between the Crenshaw/LAX and Green Lines along Prairie Ave in dedicated lanes. If ridership keeps growing, plan for conversion to rail.
My idea is to extend the LAX APM to the Inglewood sporting venues. This could be accomplished as a P3, with financing from Balmer and Kroenke. The Olympic committees could also be asked to kick in a few bucks, since these brand new facilities are sure to be attractive venues for Olympic events in 2028. With this arrangement the sporting venues would have direct connections to the Green and Crenshaw Lines.
This is another reason for the MTA to build a spur to serve all three venues. Plan and build it now, not after the Crenshaw Line is completed or the apparent need becomes a reality. It’s time for the MTA to think big and look back into Los Angeles transit history and see what works. There were spur tracks at the Coliseum and Santa Anita Race Track amoung others at one time and it worked
I think it’s a little unfair for you to accuse Metro of not thinking big, Metro has among the largest (if not the largest), most ambitious transit expansion programs in the country currently. On any given week in recent years Metro has been in the midst of not just a single expansion or extension project but multiple expansion projects. I can’t think of another transit agency in the US in recent years that has had 5 transit extensions/expansions under construction at one time (which was the case with LA Metro in recent years where we had the gold line foothill extension, phase II of the Expo line, the Crenshaw/LAX transit corridor, segment 1 of the west side subway extension and the downtown regional connector projects all in various stages of construction until phase II of expo and the foothill extension opened for service last year). Today Metro still has 3 different ongoing construction projects (west side subway segment 1, regional connector and Crenshaw) with more on the way in the near future (phase 2 of the foothill extension and segment 2 of the west side subway extension) already in pre-construction work and set to begin heavy construction in the next 18 months or so. And beyond that Metro still has a boatload of transit expansion projects well into planning and with committed dedicated funding, essentially ensuring this burst of transit construction LA has seen in recent years will continue for, literally, decades to come. For the next several decades it’s easy to see that on any given day Metro will continue to have not just one, but multiple expansion projects in construction..
I don’t think I need to tell you that this hasn’t really been the norm in recent years for most American cities. Even in cities that have made significant investments in transit (Denver, Portland, Dallas, Salt Lake City, etc) their lists of desired projects and planned expansions have been nowhere near as ambitious as Metros. Metro convinced voters to approve Measure R’s new funding and expansion list in 2008, most cities would of been happy with just that, which was already an ambitious expansion program, but Metro “dreamed big” and put another measure on the ballot just a few years later in 2012 in a bid to speed up construction of metros expansion program. When that narrowly failed, they didn’t pack up and give up, they dreamed bigger, putting another measure to the ballot to raise new funding to not only speed up already planned expansion projects but to add and fund even more projects. And then it made those funding streams permenant to allow for LA to be continuously investing in expanding transit through the region far into the future.
We can certainly complain about many things with Metro, but dreaming big and having ambitious expansion plans is not currently one of them.
I for one will probably stop going to Clippers games if they move to Inglewood.
The Clippers to Inglewood would be pretty awesome. I can remember the buzz the area had when the Lakers were still there and all of the other events as well. Considering that the NBA, NFL, and Music industry can really breathe life into an area, It would be wise to team up with Metro and Inglewood for a solution that is permanent.