The Scar of Progress, Los Angeles

[Alan Sondheim]

The Scar of Progress, Los Angeles


Or: the origin of sprawl and the Iraq War.

The Red Cars, an electric railway system, characterized Los Angeles early
on. It was later dismantled. The system led to LA's rapid/rabid expansion.
There was money to be made by busline replacement, even though buses have
to compete with traffic, are noisy, polluting, slow, and dangerous, and
run few and far between.

I lived years ago at the corner of Spaulding and Fountain in L.A.-West
Hollywood. The ghosts of the Red Car line were everywhere. I noticed a
diagonal swath cut across Hollywood/West Hollywood - a scar of past public
transportation. WorldWind brought this to the foreground; you can see the
results below. This was a passenger-only line. The land was immediately
reclaimed by developers, etc., and the corridor has disappeared.

Electric railways were extremely common in the United States, say from the
10s through the 40s. (The Red Cars ran from 1901-1961.) Even my home town
of Wilkes-Barre had one connecting it with Scranton. The automobile wiped
them out, as did corruption and short-sighted politicians (are there any
other kind?). The result is the oil crisis and the mess in this gluttonous
country that consumes something like 25% of the world's resources. (See
the Wikipedia article below.)

http://www.asondheim.org/RedLinescara.jpg
http://www.asondheim.org/RedLinescarb.jpg
http://www.asondheim.org/RedLinescarc.jpg
http://www.asondheim.org/RedLinescard.jpg
http://www.asondheim.org/RedLinescare.jpg
http://www.asondheim.org/RedLinescarf.jpg

Additional: http://www.asondheim.org/tustinblimphangers4.mpg


Pacific Electric Railway (from Wikipedia):

The Pacific Electric Railway (AAR reporting mark PE), also known as the
Red Car system, was a mass transit system in Southern California using
streetcars, light rail and buses. At its greatest extent, the system
connected cities in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, and the Inland
Empire.

The system was divided into three districts:

     * Northern District: Pasadena, San Gabriel Valley, San Bernardino.
     * Southern District: Long Beach, Newport, San Pedro, Santa Ana.
     * Western District: Hollywood, Burbank/Glendale, San Fernando Valley,
Santa Monica.

The Pacific Electric Railway was established by Henry Huntington in 1901.
Henry's uncle, Collis Huntington, was one of the founders of the Southern
Pacific railroad and had bequeathed Henry a huge fortune upon his death.
Only a few years after the company's formation, most of Pacific Electric's
stock was purchased by the Southern Pacific Railroad, which Henry
Huntington had tried and failed to gain control of a decade earlier. In
1911, Southern Pacific bought out Huntington completely and also purchased
several other passenger railway operators in the Los Angeles area,
including the Los Angeles Pacific, resulting in the "Great Merger" of
1911. At this point the Pacific Electric became the largest operator of
interurban electric railway passenger service in the world, with over
1,000 miles of track. Henry Huntington then purchased the company which
provided local streetcar service in central Los Angeles and nearby
communities, the Los Angeles Railway (LARy). These were known as the
"Yellow Cars," and actually carried more passengers than the PE's "Red
Cars."

Pacific Electric passenger service was sold off in 1953 to a company known
as Metropolitan Coach Lines, whose intention was to convert all rail
service to bus service as quickly as possible. Many of the Pacific
Electric passenger lines were shut down in 1954, but the California state
government would not allow the most popular lines to be discontinued. In
1958, Metropolitan Coach Lines relinquished control of the remaining rail
lines to a government agency, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority,
which also took over the remaining streetcar lines of the successor of the
Los Angeles Railway, the Los Angeles Transit Lines. Only a handful of
electric train lines remained operating at that time and the conventional
wisdom held that their days were numbered. The last passenger line of the
Pacific Electric, the line from Los Angeles to Long Beach, continued until
April 9, 1961. With the closure of the Long Beach line, the final link in
the system as well as the PE's first line some sixty years prior, was
eliminated. The PE's freight service was continued by the Southern Pacific
Railroad and operated under the Pacific Electric name through 1964. The
few remaining former Los Angeles Railway streetcar lines were removed in
1963.




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