Fly Me Out to the Ballgame

Zero Emissions Transit's David Grannis leads the development of a high-speed aerial gondola to carry visitors from LA's iconic Union Station to Dodger Stadium.

Artist concept for a gondola that will shuttle visitors and Dodger fans between LA's Union Station and Dodger Stadium. Artwork courtesy of Zero Emissions Transit.

In early 1998, the City of Pasadena, Calif., had grown frustrated with the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) for failing to complete its promised Blue Line light rail extension from downtown Los Angeles to Pasadena.

Faced with rising costs and shifting priorities at Metro, Pasadena city leaders looked for other ways to complete the project. They approached David Grannis, the head of a local urban transportation strategy company, for his perspective on how to get Metro to restart the project. They were surprised by his proposed solution.

"I recommended that they generate state legislation to create a construction authority with design and build authority, aggregate all the Blue Line-related money that was on account at Metro, the State and the three cities involved (Los Angeles, Pasadena, South Pasadena), do the design-build contract, build it, then give the keys back to Metro to operate it," Grannis recalls.

Turning Ideas Into Gold

Pasadena officials didn't believe such an approach could work. Grannis, however, figured that a new Burbank-based California state senator named Adam Schiff (who represented Pasadena) might be willing to draft such legislation.

LA Metro's Gold Line is now part of the agency's A and E lines. Steve Hymon/LA Metro photo.

State Senator Schiff authored California Senate Bill 1847, which created the Pasadena Metro Blue Line Construction Authority, an independent entity tasked with completing the light rail line to Pasadena. California Governor Pete Wilson signed the bill into law in Sept. 1998. The Blue Line extension, renamed the Gold Line, began operating in July 2003 between Metro's Union Station in Los Angeles and Pasadena.

"It was the only LA Metro project up until that point built on time and on budget, and we gave the keys back to Metro," Grannis declares proudly. "The project was quite successful."

Solving for Congestion, Expanding Transit Options

David Grannis, Executive Director, Zero Emissions Transit D Grannis Photo

Today, as the executive director of Zero Emissions Transit (ZET), a nonprofit supporting organization to Climate Resolve, Grannis is using his "make the problem bigger so I can solve it" philosophy to help craft a new public transit link to connect Metro's Union Station in downtown LA to another famous regional destination: Dodger Stadium.

The proposed Los Angeles Aerial Rapid Transit (LA ART) gondola will carry visitors 1.2 miles from Union Station to Dodger Stadium in just seven minutes. The 53-car system will carry up to 10,000 passengers per hour—5,000 in each direction—eliminating up to 3,000 cars from the Dodger Stadium parking lot during baseball games or concert events.

Like the Gold Line, LA ART will help relieve congestion, reduce air pollution and offer its customers a cheaper, more reliable transportation option, in this case, for getting to and from Dodger Games. Its originating point near El Pueblo de Los Angeles will also help stimulate economic development.

"When the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1957, the City of LA granted them a conditional use permit for Dodger Stadium," Grannis explains. "One of the conditions of that permit was that the team would seek opportunities to connect the stadium to public transit. LA ART will check that box."

Growing Up Strategically

Grannis was born and raised in a middle-class family in Portland, Ore. His mom, an elementary school teacher, would go on to lead the Portland Public School District's desegregation efforts; his "jack-of-all-trades" dad sold real estate, among other things.

Jesuit High School taught Grannis to think holistically, a skill that underpins his success as an urban strategist. Jesuit High School photo.

Grannis credits his education at Portland's Jesuit High School, however, for much of the success he's experienced as an urban strategist.

"The Jesuits taught me to think about the world and my life holistically," he reflects. "As an urban strategist, you have to look at (and try to deal with) the whole picture. You can't solve for symptoms because they just keep coming back."

Turning Hunger into Opportunity

As a college undergrad—he matriculated at USC in 1976—Grannis studied Renaissance history and political science but was far more interested in holistic topics such as educationally-focused simulation games.

"I wrote a role-playing game called "The Hunger Game" that got me invited to a conference held in the fall of 1979 by The Hunger Project, [a nonprofit founded in 1977 to combat chronic hunger and poverty]," Grannis explains.

Pat Russell, an LA community activist mentored Grannis and inspired him to think big about urban transportation systems.

"While attending the conference, I met a woman who was quite intrigued with the game and wanted to know how I came up with its concept," he continues. "It turned out that she was a member of the LA City Council and also a native of Portland, Ore., so we connected. Her name was Pat Russell."

Eight months later—Grannis had graduated USC by then with bachelor's degrees in political science and history—Russell offered him a position as a City Council aide. The day marked an irrevocable turn in Grannis' career toward politics, land use and transportation planning— and he's never looked back.

Learning to Think Big

Working with Councilmember Russell, Grannis applied his holistic, "big picture" thinking to a variety of local projects including a coastal transportation ordinance, the annexation of land by the City of Los Angeles to create the planned community of Playa Vista, and several projects related to LA World Airports.

"I became very close to Russell, the first woman to become head of the LA City Council, Grannis notes. "She became my mentor and put me on the path I'm on today and encouraged my crazy thinking and crazy ideas."

Going Solo

In 1986, Grannis had the crazy idea to leave his City Council position and start his own urban planning company, Planning Company Associates. Armed with a few clients and the confidence gained at City Hall, he landed several major land-planning projects, including a master plan for downtown Los Angeles.

"I started out in land use, but actually found the LA transportation arena much more challenging and intellectually stimulating," Grannis explains.

His first "big" transportation project, he recalls, was Port Disney, a proposed Disney resort in Long Beach, Calif. At the time, Disney was also considering developing WestCOT, a West Coast version of its EPCOT Center in Florida, to be located adjacent to Disneyland Park in Anaheim, Calif.

Disney's California Adventure theme park reflects Grannis' holistic transportation strategies. Photo by Eric Philbin via Creative Commons.

WestCOT was eventually canceled but it laid groundwork for Disney’s California Adventure theme park, which opened in 2001. Some of Grannis' suggested transportation strategies for WestCOT, however, found their way into California Adventure.

"Those direct connect ramps on Interstate 5 that go right into the theme park and help people avoid crossing many lanes of traffic to exit the freeway… that handiwork reflects my close partnership with Caltrans," he says proudly.

Dreaming Big and Bigger

LA's Union Station has long been a hub and jumping off point for urban transit planning. Photo by Nan Palmero via Creative Commons

Through his work on the UMSP—which included an entitlement for Union Station to build a sports arena over its tracks, comparable to Madison Square Garden—Grannis was retained by Peter O'Malley, owner at the time of the LA Dodgers, to join a team working on developing an NFL stadium adjacent to Dodger Stadium.

"If we had football and baseball up the hill and basketball and hockey at Union Station, we could connect the two venues with an aerial tram, creating public transit access to all four of LA's major professional sports," Grannis suggests.

Earlier studies, he claims, had shown that building a subway from Union Station to Dodger Stadium was too expensive and that light rail couldn't make it up the grade to the stadium, so the only viable options were either a funicular railroad or an aerial tram.

Reloading for the Future

The idea for a gondola connecting Dodger Stadium to public transit lay dormant until about 2014 when McCourt Global, 50 percent owner of the land surrounding the stadium, asked Grannis to help them conduct feasibility and engineering studies of different transit options. Once again, an aerial gondola rose to the top of the list.

In 2018, McCourt Global and Guggenheim Partners, owner of the Dodgers, formed a partnership, Aerial Rapid Transit Technologies (ARTT), to formally propose LA ART to LA Metro's Office of Extraordinary Innovation. ARTT also asked Metro to serve as the public sponsor of the environmental impact report (EIR) required by the California Environmental Quality Act.

"We were the 110th proposal that Metro had received that year, but instead of using Metro money, we proposed paying for everything," Grannis emphasizes.

Creating Momentum

Along the way, however, ARTT decided to donate LA ART—effectively a public transportation asset and not a money-making enterprise—to a nonprofit. In 2022, Grannis connected ARTT with Climate Resolve, a champion of climate resiliency, who created Zero Emissions Transit as a separate 501(c)3 supporting organization, to design, build, finance and operate the gondola system.

Metro officially approved LA ART and certified its EIR in Feb. 2024.

Navigating Challenges

Today, says Grannis, LA ART is going through its final right-of-way approvals with two State of California agencies—Caltrans, because LA ART crosses over the Caltrans-operated Harbor (110) Freeway near Dodger Stadium, and California State Parks, because LA ART's Chinatown/State Park station sits partially on the Los Angeles State Historic Park—and in City of Los Angeles’ public right of way.

The proposed LA ART will comprise three gondola stations, including one in Chinatown. Artist concept courtesy of Zero Emissions Transit.

Unfortunately, some Chinatown residents and other local community groups (e.g. "Stop the Gondola") oppose the LA ART development.

They cite privacy concerns—LA ART includes a geofenced system that automatically fogs gondola windows when flying over specific sensitive residential structures—construction noise and changes to the historical nature of Chinatown and surrounding communities.

Grannis understands but is frustrated by this opposition.

"We did a county-wide survey and received about 74% support for the project. LA ART is a regional project for everyone, including the local community," he claims. "We're relieving local and regional congestion and greenhouse gas emissions in the community; it's a seven-minute ride to Dodger Stadium—and we're offering it free to Dodger fans, local residents and employees."

Keeping It Simple

Workdays begin early in the Pasadena home that Grannis shares with his wife, two sons, a cat and two adopted mutts, Kevin and Leo. He is sobered by the Jan 2025 LA wildfires.

Grannis is almost as passionate about transportation systems as he is about his adopted shelter dogs, Kevin and Leo - D Grannis photo

"We live in Pasadena, right next to the Altadena fire," Grannis shares. "We evacuated, but the Altadena house I used to live in burned down. The house we live in now is safe, but we were out for about three days and didn't have water for a week. But we are very grateful, as we know about 30 families who lost their homes."

His early morning routine—"I like mornings because it's quiet"—includes a stiff cup of coffee, a scan of the daily news headlines, and a short drive to drop off his youngest son at school before heading to his leased office space in Pasadena.

Celebrating Kids and Dogs

Grannis is demonstrably passionate about devising transportation systems that improve lives, but when it comes to kids and dogs, his priorities are clear.

"I have served on the Children's Planning Council and the National Board of the American Humane Society," he says. "Kids and animals are kind of my thing in the charitable space."

Over the years, Grannis estimates, he and his family have fostered about 30 dogs, including Kevin and Leo, which he calls his "failed fosters." He also supports his youngest son's burgeoning interest in Go Kart racing—"he's actually quite good"—and can often be found at a track in nearby Burbank cheering his son's participation in karting events.

LA ART promises year 'round adventures for baseball fans and visitors to Dodger Stadium - Artist concept courtesy of Zero Emissions Transit

Looking Ahead

Despite the ongoing LA ART review process, Grannis remains optimistic about ZET's ability to fund, construct and begin operating the gondola within the next few years. He expects tourism and sponsorships to play important roles in the project's future.

"What people don't realize is that now that Shohei Ohtani (is playing for the Dodgers), we have tons of visitors (from Asia and Japan) visiting Dodger Stadium year round," he emphasizes.

Swinging for the Fences

Dodger fans and Olympic visitors hope to ride the gondola to Dodger Stadium as soon as 2028. Artist concept courtesy of Zero Emissions Transit.

He is also excited about the boost that LA ART could get from the LA 2028 Olympics, where baseball will return to Dodger Stadium as a featured event.

In recent months, President Trump has called the 2028 Summer Games "America's Olympics" and has pledged to be "supportive in every way possible to make them the greatest games." Maybe, just maybe, Grannis imagines, the President's enthusiasm will help speed up the timetable needed for LA ART to begin operating before the Opening Ceremonies in July 2028.

But he's not holding his breath.

"I've been working on this project for over 10 years now," he declares. "I appreciate the good intentions of all the people who have shared this dream and counseled me on how to make it happen. Building infrastructure in this country, however, should not be this hard. LA ART should be built and operating by now."

# # #

If you enjoyed this article about evolving transit options in Los Angeles, I’d like to recommend that you check out my articles about Kim Wilson, a key manager of Metro’s D-Line Subway Extension Project or Randall Winston, an infrastructure czar ensuring that Metro bus riders get the coverage they deserve. If you have suggestions for other people I could feature on this blog, please send your ideas to brooks@personsofinfrastructure.com.  Many thanks.