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Metra clearly. L.A was never meant to be a transit oriented city. They’re pioneers for the freeway system.
From another thread somewhere here I've heard that LA was actually originally connected by street cars and much like most modern U.S. cities they were torn down in the advent of more highways for the automobile.
From another thread somewhere here I've heard that LA was actually originally connected by street cars and much like most modern U.S. cities they were torn down in the advent of more highways for the automobile.
Yes and the fact LA still has old downtown LA with buildings like in the pictures of this link.
The streetcar system in Los Angeles was made up of two major carriers – the Los Angeles Railway and the Pacific Electric Railway.
The Los Angeles Railway trains, also known as Yellow Cars, operated in central Los Angeles and the immediate surrounding neighborhoods between 1901 and 1963.At its peak, the Yellow Car system ran over 20 streetcar lines with 1,250 trolleys, mostly running through the core of LA and nearby neighborhoods such as Echo Park, Westlake and Lincoln Heights.
The Pacific Electric Railway, or the Red Cars, operated from 1901 to 1961. The system lasted for over fifty years, and at its peak traversed over 1,100 miles of track with 900 electric trolley cars.
So what caused the downfall of Los Angeles’ streetcar system? Some believe that General Motors launched a targeted program to take streetcars off the roads.
In 1936, GM, along with investors Firestone Tire and Standard Oil of California, established several front companies for the express purpose of purchasing and dismantling America’s streetcar systems.
National City Lines, a bus operation founded in 1920, was reorganized into a holding company. In 1938, GM formed Pacific City Lines to purchase streetcar systems in the western US . In 1945, National City Lines acquired the Yellow Cars system and converted many of its lines into bus routes.
GM, Firestone and Standard Oil were later convicted of conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses and related products to local transit companies controlled by National City Lines and other companies.
In 1963, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority took over what was left of the Yellow Cars and the Red Cars and removed the remaining streetcar and trolley lines, replacing them with diesel buses on March 31, 1963. This ended nearly 90 years of streetcar service in the LA region.
Chicago once had the LARGEST Street-car system in the world. Had the same fate by lines being bought out by Powers that be to be changed to buses GM made. It dates back to horse drawn trolley's even in underground tunnels, still the tunnels are there long abandoned.
- Chicago at one time did claim to have the largest streetcar system in the world, with a fleet of over 3,200 passenger cars and over 1,000 miles of track – a claim backed up in several sources.
* Still LA seems to have had had the MOST TRACK and Chicago the most Passenger Cars.
- Chicago at one time did claim to have the largest streetcar system in the world, with a fleet of over 3,200 passenger cars and over 1,000 miles of track – a claim backed up in several sources.
* Still LA seems to have had had the MOST TRACK and Chicago the most Passenger Cars.
I think that this comparison indicates the difference in quality between the two systems. LA' s streetcar history is romanticized by many in LA and in movies (Who Framed Roger Rabbit), but it wasn't actually all that great, which is why buses quickly took over. Much of LA's system was single tracked with infrequent service and that shows with the difference in number of cars compared to Chicago. People will often (mis)characterize LA's system as one of the greatest in the US. Maybe it was, but it couldn't transition into a modern system. Trains ran fast because LA had millions fewer people and many millions fewer cars. It wouldn't work today.
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