Dodgers Kill Stadium Shuttle

No one's saying Manny Ramirez's $45 million signing had anything to do with it, but Curbed LA and Streetsblog both ruminate over an L.A. Times report that the Los Angeles Dodgers will not be paying for shuttle buses to take fans from Union Station to  Chavez Ravine this season. (A summer for which Ramirez will receive $25 million.) According to the Times, owner Frank McCourt told a Town Hall Los Angeles luncheon that "he would not pay for the shuttle because, as a private business, the Dodgers' responsibilities include creating jobs and sharing revenue with government rather than operating a shuttle system."

McCourt would probably change his mind if the Dodgers suffered from middling attendance, but the fact that the team enjoys incredibly high gate stats from car-driving fans means he's under no economic pressure (the only kind he understands) to spend the estimated half million dollars needed to fund the shuttles. The city is not very likely to step in with money of its own during its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. In this case, it's not a choice of McCourt's way or the highway, because McCourt's way is the highway -- or rather, freeway.