New York, L.A. rivalry spills over from World Series to subways, freeways and AI

The New York-Los Angeles rivalry may have existed before the Brooklyn Dodgers packed up and moved west in 1958, but that seismic shift certainly didn’t help. America’s two biggest cities are at it again, with baseball at the fore. The Big Apple and The City of Angels are currently going head-to-head in the World Series (with the Dodgers v. the Yankees, with game 5 tonight in New York; Dodgers lead 3-1), but they’ve also been duking it out for weeks online over stadiums, accessibility, and transit.

Los Angeles’s Metro, which operates the city’s bus and train lines, inadvertently stepped into it earlier this month when the agency tweeted an informational video on how to walk to Dodger Stadium. The stadium is disconnected from the city’s train lines and perched on a notoriously hard-to-navigate hill in the Echo Park neighborhood.

New Yorkers guffawed at the circuitous, 25-minute walk that includes traversing past impatient drivers and stepping over cracked, narrow sidewalks before finally reaching the Chinatown A Line station. Metro fended off some criticism by pointing out its Dodger Express service, a free bus shuttle from two different city spots. The buses are popular, yet far from efficient, often getting caught in traffic out of the stadium (the buses have dedicated lanes prior to the games).   

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While there is a proposal to build a gondola (yes, a gondola) from L.A.’s Union Station to Dodger Stadium, the lack of direct rail transit is a bugaboo for Los Angeles, which has managed to build 109 miles of rail in 34 years, connecting places like Hollywood, Inglewood, Santa Monica, and Downtown L.A. (Beverly Hills will even get a subway stop next year). While many Angelenos are making the arduous walk work, according to the New York Times, Yankees fans benefit from New York’s more robust system, only having to walk a few hundred feet from the 161 St./Yankee Stadium station in the Bronx that serves the D and 4 lines.

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On Monday, shots were fired at New York by Eric Spillman, a reporter at Los Angeles’s KTLA. 

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Of course, New York had to respond. It wasn’t from the MTA, but the NYC DOT, which oversees all public transit in the metropolis. And they brought AI into it!

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We can all agree that both cities have their pluses and minuses — and it sure feels nice to have Americans arguing about something that doesn’t involve politics. In the meantime, folks can cruise over to the Bronx for Wednesday night’s game at Yankee Stadium. If the Yanks win, the Series moves back to L.A., where fans can lace up their walking shoes and dream of that gondola.