Easy but Not So Easy: Walking to Dodger Stadium

Report Issue

Please complete the required fields.

Your Name

Email

Reason (required)
This post contains broken linksPost has incorrect informationPost has spamCopyright IssueOther

Description

Submit

The Los Angeles Dodgers are heading back to the World Series for the fourth time since 2017, giving Metro (LA’s giant transit agency) the perfect opportunity to post a video showing off Dodger Stadium’s easy access to nearby public transit. Except, well, it’s actually not very easy at all.

“Yes you can! (walk to Metro rail after Dodgers games),” reads the opening caption of a TikTok-style voiceover video posted to social media by the public transit agency on Oct. 13 and again on Oct. 19. What follows is a sweeping satellite map view that shows, over the course of 25-plus minutes in walking time, what it would really take to maneuver from a bleacher seat to the Chinatown rail stop on the A Line. With a dozen or so direction changes, multiple crosswalks to navigate and one freeway to traverse, needless to say, it’s not quite so simple.

For starters, the video has postgame fans weaving through the stadium’s massive and notoriously hellish parking lot, which — on a game day — will require plenty of darting in and out of slow-moving traffic. Even for a non-World Series game, exiting Dodger Stadium, getting to your car and then making it to a freeway onramp can sometimes take hours. From the lot, Metro tells walkers to hug the clogged exit gate, which is not designed for pedestrian traffic whatsoever and offers no sidewalk, until they reach the freeway.

Don’t worry, the journey is still just getting started. There’s a crosswalk (without a lighted traffic signal) to navigate, then a pedestrian bridge over the freeway itself, and from there, it’s a long jaunt into Chinatown, with several more turns, before arriving at the A Line station.

Much of the walk is unlit, and even more of it is unprotected from moving vehicles. There is minimal pedestrian infrastructure, let alone a wheelchair-accessible route. But hey, as the video notes: “It’s all downhill!”

In all, the walk runs well over a mile and could take the better part of an hour in real time, especially after a busy game with lots of cars also using the same exit points. Many commenters were quick to give nodes to competing transit-friendly baseball parks like Petco Park in San Diego; others pointed out some of the many safety issues along the route. “Looks like a video game where you’re trying to stay alive,” said one commenter.

The public agency did try to respond to some of the online backlash before giving up, saying grimly in one reply: “It may not be for everyone but it is an option.”

A Cable Car Divides Los Angeles: “It’s a recipe for disaster”