Mayor Garcetti wants to build a gondola to the Hollywood Sign

On the top of most tourists' to-do lists: seeing the Hollywood Sign. But getting an up-close view has gotten a bit more complicated recently, particularly with the closure of the Beachwood Canyon hiking gate. The solution? A gondola, of course.

At least, that's the idea Mayor Eric Garcetti floated in a recent interview with ABC7. In what sounds like something between a "what if" proposal and a concrete plan, Garcetti laid out the idea of a gondola that would take guests from somewhere at or near Universal Studios to the Mount Lee summit. Any revenue generated from the gondola would then be funneled back into maintenance for the park and mitigating traffic near the sign.

Here's Garcetti's full quote: 

"I think we need to have access to the Hollywood Sign, both for residents and people who come here. But we've got to figure out a better way that doesn't just choke all of the streets with a thousand tour buses—people can't get out of their own driveways.

"One of the ideas that I'm looking at with the councilmember David Ryu in the area is what could we do to actually bring people to the summit, to where the Hollywood Sign is, without going through the neighborhoods to the south. Could we come up from this part of town? Could we come up from Universal Studios? Could we even have a gondola that goes up there or something that brought people there [that] would earn money that we could put back into traffic mitigation and improving the park?"

The Hollywood Sign is undoubtedly one of the most famous L.A. attractions, so it's a positive sign (no pun intended) to see someone as high up in local government as the mayor treating its access as a major issue. We'll skip past the obvious questions—you know, like who would build and pay for this and how a nearly two-mile route over both private property and public parkland would be approved—and instead focus on whether or not directing people from the Valley to the summit of the sign is even the best answer.

Universal Studios, as a major tourist attraction with ample parking and Metro access, certainly makes sense as a starting point. But ending at the Hollywood Sign summit, which you can currently hike to, puts visitors behind the sign. It's a stunning view of L.A., but probably not the postcard photo of the Hollywood Sign that most tourists are looking for. For that, you really need to see the sign from the south. Punch the Hollywood Sign into Google Maps, though, and you'll be directed to the Griffith Observatory, and that's simply too far (and too congested) for a satisfying photo op with the sign.

But as Garcetti points out, having tourists attempt to navigate the winding streets to the south of the sign isn't the answer. Cruise up Beachwood Drive on a weekend and you'll see countless clueless cars pulling over to try to snap a photo of the sign. Meanwhile, we'll take the suspect barricade of "locals only" signs on Deronda Drive and Mulholland Highway as a pretty clear signal that homeowners in the sign-adjacent neighborhoods would never go for any sort of plan that brings more people to their neck of the woods. For now, we think that Lake Hollywood Park, which is reachable from both the Valley and the L.A. Basin, is the best way to see the sign—even if you can't get to it via a gondola.

It's not the first time a proposal for a Hollywood Sign gondola has been kicked around. In a 2011 community meeting, someone proposed a gondola from Travel Town, which then-councilmember Tom LaBonge put to an unsuccessful vote. 

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