Baseball's All-Star Game festivities come to L.A. There will be road closures

You may have heard that the MLB All-Star game is coming to Dodger Stadium on Tuesday, bringing with it the customary traffic snarls and parking madness.

What you may not know is that there will be MLB-related events in downtown L.A. as well on Saturday through Tuesday, resulting in street closures and "soft closures" around the Los Angeles Convention Center. More festivities — free ones, in fact — are scheduled for the Santa Monica Pier on Saturday and Sunday too.

Here's a quick guide to the planned disruptions in the flow of traffic, as well as some facts about travel to and from the All-Star events.

Downtown street closures

In anticipation of the throngs of baseball fans descending on downtown, the city closed all or part of four streets near the Convention Center through Tuesday.

There will be no vehicles allowed on the stretch of Gilbert Lindsay Drive and 12th Street from Pico Boulevard to Figueroa Street; Chick Hearn Court from Figueroa to Georgia Street; and Georgia from Chick Hearn Court to West Road. There will also be soft closures — that is, no through traffic — on Georgia from West Road to Olympic Boulevard and on Chick Hearn Court from Georgia to L.A. Live Way.

The city plans to have officers directing traffic at the intersections around the Convention Center, so don't even think about trying to sneak your car past those orange cones.

If you're driving to MLB's "Play Ball Park" at the Convention Center, parking will be available at the L.A. Live garages on Olympic just west of Figueroa and on Chick Hearn Court just east of L.A. Live Way. There will also be the usual array of lots on nearby streets. Expect to pay (ahem!) "event pricing."

For a better deal, take a Metro A (a.k.a. Blue line) or E (Expo line) train or a Silver line bus to the Pico Street station and make the short walk to the Convention Center. MLB offers to cut the ticket prices by more than 50% for riders who show their Metro TAP cards at the box office. Sans discount, tickets for the indoor events at the Convention Center cost $35 for the general public, $30 for children ages 2 to 12, $19 for veterans and seniors, and $15 for college students.

Dodger Stadium traffic

The city is planning the same sort of response it does for opening day Dodgers games and other major events at Chavez Ravine, said L.A. Department of Transportation spokesman Colin Sweeney. That means no road closures, but extra traffic officers to help with the higher anticipated volume of vehicles.

The stadium will host two games Saturday involving minor-league stars and celebrities (separately, not together), followed by a nighttime concert. The games start at 4 p.m. and the concert at about 9:15 p.m.

On Monday, the All-Star players will hold a public workout at 2:15 p.m., followed by the annual home run derby at 5 p.m. (featuring former Dodger and former Angel Albert Pujols, considered a very long shot to win the long-ball contest). The All-Star Game is set for 5 p.m. Tuesday.

On all three days, the stadium parking lots will open at 1:30 p.m., a half an hour before the stadium will open. You can purchase parking for any of the days for $50 online; MLB warns that spots at the stadium "will be extremely limited, and availability on the day of events is not guaranteed."

Inside the stadium, seats on Saturday go for $45 to $150, on Monday for $275 to more than $3,000 (on the resale site Stubhub), and on Tuesday for $450 to $7,500 (resale).

If you are visiting Los Angeles for the game, natives will tell you that driving to and from the stadium is both soul-sapping and rage-inducing. To spare yourself the agony, Metro is offering its free Dodger Stadium Express bus service to and from all the stadium's All-Star events. You can catch the bus either at Union Station, where parking is $8, or at one of the following South Bay Metro stations: Slauson, Manchester, Harbor Freeway, Rosecrans, or the Harbor Gateway Transit Center (Bay 9), where there is a limited amount of free parking.

According to Metro, the buses will start running at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, 3:30 p.m. Monday and 2:30 p.m. Tuesday. The MLB's All-Star website offers a map showing where the buses drop off and pick up passengers on the stadium grounds.

If you don't mind walking up the impressive hills of Chavez Ravine, another Metro option is to take the L train (formerly known as the Gold line) to the Chinatown stop, then make the roughly 40-minute, 1.7-mile trek up to the stadium. You'll spend far less time waiting in line for a bus, and you'll get a workout — it's a win-win.

And if walking isn't enough of a challenge for you, the stadium also offers bike racks, along with some bike lanes to increase the odds that you'll reach them.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.