Community Service

Service or hypocrisy?

Los Angeles City Council districts are large areas and each includes several communities.  Within our communities, we probably tend to feel that our City Councilperson exists to serve only us.  While it is true that there may be district-wide issues within each district, it is also true that there are community-wide issues that are unique to each community, and which are not district-wide issues.

Traffic on Solano Avenue in the Solano Canyon community is one such local issue, and it is one that is apparently not being adequately addressed, at least according to many of the residents of Solano Canyon.

This is the area near Solano Canyon.  Notice the hulking presence of Dodger Stadium, whose existence has been the subject of several blogs, on both this website and on the Chávez Ravine website.  In particular, see the recent blog, A Disaster Waiting To Happen.

This is the location of the Solano Canyon community.

Stadium traffic on game days

This is the route that stadium traffic that uses Solano Avenue for access to Dodger Stadium must take on Dodger game days.

The yellow arrows point to traffic traveling both northeast and southwest on North Broadway.  The red line is the tortuous route that that traffic must take up Solano Avenue to the 500 block; then, after making a hard left-turn onto Amador Street, it follows Amador to an "S" curve (Amador Place) that empties once more onto Solano Avenue, which then merges with, and becomes, Academy Road, and which eventually provides access to the Dodger Stadium parking lots through the Academy Gate (Gate D).  Approximately 10% of stadium traffic on game days uses the Academy Gate.

In truth, however, this picture is itself incomplete; there is yet additional  traffic that empties off of southbound CA-110 (upper yellow arrow) onto 30-foot-wide Academy Road (white line), which is actually nothing more than an extension of Casanova Street, an original street in Solano Canyon that dates from 1888.

CD-1 and LADOT devised a plan

Former City Councilman Ed Reyes of CD-1, after listening to the complaints of the residents of Solano Canyon and working closely with them, came up with a traffic mitigation plan that was approved by the City Council in 2013.

Now, Dodger Stadium has five gates that provide access to various areas of the vast stadium parking lots.

Other access to Dodger Stadium

The purpose of this plan, which was explained in detail in the blog A Disaster Waiting To Happen, was effectively to close Solano Avenue to Dodger Stadium game-day traffic.  In addition, and somewhat bizarrely, a one-block segment of Bouett Street was also closed, although rarely did any stadium traffic fail to make the "S" turn on Amador and instead continue up Amador to Bouett Street, which then required a full stop at Bouett, followed by a hard-right turn onto Bouett and another hard stop at Solano Avenue; and, finally, a hard-left turn onto Solano Avenue, which would have been solid with stadium traffic that was not likely to yield to allow cars to enter onto Solano from Bouett.  That strange closure is the short, white line marked with a red "X".

Of the five access gates, the preferred gate, according to the City and the Dodgers, is the Downtown Gate (Gate E).  Other gates are the Sunset Gate (Gate A), the Stadium Way Gate (Gate B), also popularly known as the Scott Gate, and the Golden State Gate (Gate C).

Interestingly, the Scott Gate was closed for a time, due to complaints from the residents of Echo Park about excessive traffic in their community on game days (does that sound familiar?).  Although the Scott Gate is once again being used, the residents of Echo Park have achieved a modicum of relief by restricting parking on several of their streets.  (See the blog, "Equal treatment under the law?" on this website.)  It should be noted that Echo Park residents live in CD-13; Solano Canyon residents live in CD-1.

Don't complain; solve the problem!

We all know that it is easy to complain; it is another thing altogether to solve the problem.  While there may not be an easy solution to the problem of game-day traffic through Solano Canyon, there may exist more than one solution.

One such solution is to enforce the City Council-approved DOT plan to limit — if not eliminate — stadium traffic through the Solano Canyon community on Solano Avenue on game days.  It is known for certain that there continues to be an ongoing dialog with CD-1 staff about this issue; but, to date, community efforts at a solution have been met with delay and obfuscation.

Or how about simply making better use of the existing Downtown Gate exit from CA-110 that empties directly onto the access road to the Downtown Gate, which both the City and the Dodgers profess is the preferred access gate to the stadium?  That would eliminate — eliminate, not simply reduce — game-day traffic on Solano Avenue.

Why not try to think outside the box for a change?

Here, the lower red "X" shows Solano Avenue closed to game-day traffic; the upper red "X" shows the same for the Academy Road exit from CA-110; and the red arrow shows the existing exit from CA-110, one that delivers game-day traffic directly to the Downtown Gate.

It's just a thought ...