That's the aim of the Los Angeles Aerial Rapid Transit (LA ART) project, which is now making its way through the public approval process and is expected to be complete in time for the 2028 Summer Olympic Games. The city will host the games.
“This has captured the imagination of a lot of people in Los Angeles,” David Grannis, executive director for the nonprofit Zero Emissions Transit (ZET) and LA ART project director, said during a panel at last month’s CoMotion Miami transportation and urbanism conference. ZET is leading the LA ART initiative.
The roughly $400 million gondola project is planned to span 1.2 miles from Union Station to Dodger Stadium. The seven-minute trip could transport about 10,000 people within two hours of the start of a stadium event, according to the company’s website.
By connecting to Union Station, a terminus for multiple bus and rail lines, the gondola is expected to increase zero-emission ridership across public transit and remove cars from Los Angeles highways.
Polling for the L.A. Aerial Rapid Transit project has shown “we’re going to capture 20 to 25 percent of attendees at every Dodger game,” Grannis said.
Gondola technology, as any skier will tell you, is not new. However, said Michael Manley, director of sales for Leitner-Poma of America, a maker of gondola equipment, it is often not considered in the smorgasbord of mobility mode options.
“In the transit space, one of our challenges is often, our mode of transit, our technology, is maybe not even considered at the beginning. So it’s a planning thing, maybe more than anything else,” Manley said during the CoMotion panel. “The technology is pretty mature, well tested, and proven. It’s really about getting it in the mix.”
And because the footprint for the infrastructure is relatively small — compared to, say, a rail line — gondolas can often get built above sensitive areas, advocates said.
“There are certain use cases where it’s a really nice fit,” Manley said, noting the gondola allows “the neighborhoods and the land around the system to be minimally impacted.”
LA ART is not the only elevated, cable-supported transit endeavor moving forward in southern California. The Great Park Board in Irvine, Calif., gave its approval April 22 for the city to negotiate with Swyft Cities to develop its Whoosh system in the 1,347-acre Orange County park. That would include fully autonomous, electric, cable-supported elevated cars capable of traveling up to 30 mph.
“As a city that leads with forward-thinking ideas and smart solutions, it’s only natural that we are in negotiations to incorporate this cutting-edge mobility system to link key Great Park amenities and create a truly unified, world-class municipal park,” Board Chairman Mike Carroll, an Irvine councilmember, said in a statement.
In February 2024, the board of directors for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (L.A. Metro), which operates a public transit system across L.A. and surrounding counties, approved LA ART’s environmental impact report. As part of that approval, L.A. Metro required the development of micromobility hubs at each of the gondola’s stations. The agency also required area residents — who have expressed various concerns about the project, including parking and gentrification — be granted free rides on the gondola. LA ART is a privately funded project and will not receive public transit funding.
The gondola project is now making its way through the approval process with California State Parks, due to the project’s impact on the Los Angeles State Historic Park, a 32-acre park immediately southeast of the stadium.
“My quick tagline is, when you start a project, everybody hates it. They hate it,” Grannis said. “You build it. They love it. They were always for it.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify the timing of approval for the LA ART project’s environmental impact report.
