My late mother was born in 1926 in Los Angeles and she used to talk about the red street cars all the time! Now I know exactly what she was talking about! Thank you so much for making this!
Born in 1956 in LA- remember the street cars and the Angels Flight and other sights here. My great grandma would take me downtown and it was wonderful. Back when Los Angeles was to me paradise. So long ago.
I was born in Long Beach CA in 1949 raised in Wilmington my dad and I would take the electric train fr Wilmas to Los Angeles then get on angels flight to bunker hill then down to Broadway farmers market then to olvera street for tacos and the plazita hear mariachi music then back on the train to Wilmas 1959 in Wilmas there was oil pits all over town it would oze out of the ground been to La Brea tar pits there was tar pits all over Southern CA
Hardly people realize it but there used to be a tall hill between Sunset and Temple with the Brodway tunnel long gone and forgotten. Fort Moore hill which is sad.
There used to be Victorian homes in south bay from Huntington Beach to Los Angeles we had some in Wilmington CA I lived up north now they have many up here in Merced Modesto,Stockton, Sacramento and San Jose
I feel privileged to have lived in L.A. in a time it was worth living there. We weren't the richest and we didn't have a car until I was 12. But the Red Car got us from Long Beach to Downtown for dinner at Clifton's and then browsing the stores before catching the last ride back. But when it was gone, I remember how stranded we felt waiting between busses for the 2 transfers we had to make coming home. And not long after we moved to Inglewood and they split the neighborhood to bring the 405 through. When my mom told me to go play in the freeway, I actually could.
the old twin tunnel was famous for an accident when a Packard Clipper drove into the streetcar section at high speed and collided head first with an oncoming streetcar. Oh, wait. That was me playing L.A Noire! 😂
Hello have you heard about the old age survivor and insurance fund and grant funds This is specifically place for those who need assistance paying for bills, starting their own business, Or even helping raise their children with old and retired people and disable and Widowed.
Nope, that is an old myth about Los Angeles history that is not true. The smaller rail lines were gobbled up by Southern Pacific. Later, they became run down, over crowded, and not profitable. The rail companies pulled up the rails due to these complications and the oil companies had absolutely nothing to do with it.
@@andrewstinson3284 The old "GM, Firestone, Standard Oil, Phillips Petroleum, National City Lines blah blah" conspiracy THEORY IS EXACTLY THAT: THEORY. The vast majority of streetcar lines all across the US were ripped out starting in the late 1920s as cheap Fords and GMs cars on credit made streetcars customership plummet and then the Great Depression drove the streetcar operators into bankruptcy. It first happened in the smallish towns across the US and then in the big cities like New York and DC and Philadelphia and Boston and San Francisco began to VOLUNTARILY replace their streetcar lines with buses ESPECIALLY after World War Two. The reason for this was for the simple reason is that maintaining the infrastructure of streetcars is VERY expensive whereas diesel buses were basically "off the shelf standard products" where you just checked the oil and filled up the diesel tank and that's it. AND, the mindset of the transit operators that still had streetcars were of the mid-1900s mentality that "trolley is past, motor buses modernity". IF GM and the other "conspirators" actually conspired to destroy the streetcar lines across the US then the would be conspirators didn't have too much work to do as by then 90% of streetcars had disappeared across the United States already.
@@archstanton5973 You forgot 1 thing that had a huge factor. A automobile could take you from your home to any place you wanted to go. No need to go to a station, get a train and take it to another station that could be far from where you actually wanted to go. Automobile implies mobility and that is what people liked. You could drive directly to old aunt Betsy's home. Automobiles made it fast, efficient and you could go any time you liked. No need for a nearby station along with depending on a train schedule to tell you when you could go. People chose the automobile over trains. No conspiracy just "ease of transportation".
@@andrewstinson3284 The same thing happened in NYC, but instead of giving up, they used tax money to merge them all together into a public and unprofitable system (what the government is SUPPOSED to do). Of course, GM purchased some of these agencies just to run them into the ground and replace them with busses and cars. They were even sued and lost on this conspiracy. Transit systems shouldn't be profitable, that profit comes from the resulting improved economy.
@@sw8741 That's the same kind of conspiracy as how razor blade companies convinced women that hairy armpits aren't okay, etc. It's just marketing. The fact is, if you live in a city, it takes away mobility by HAVING to drive. You simply can't fit as many cars as there are people commuting in cities. So mass transit is not only cheaper and better for the environment, it's also often faster. Not in American cities though, because "transit" here means busses that run once every 45 minutes and only the poor people who can't afford cars take it. But if you have a real, well-funded transit system that runs trains on dedicated tracks every few minutes, people would absolutely choose it out of convenience. That's how Europe and much of Asia operates. Even NYC it's much easier to use the subway than a car.
We could have had the best public transit systems on Earth if General Motors didn't decide to say "fuck LA, buy our cars instead" and made billions at the expense of living standards and the environment.
Hello have you heard about the old age survivor and insurance fund and grant funds This is specifically place for those who need assistance paying for bills, starting their own business, Or even helping raise their children with old and retired people and disable and Widowed.
"Public Transportation" is a form of public welfare. On the Blue Line one morning, from Norwalk to El Segundo, two LAC Sheriff Deputies, when asked how many don't pay, they said almost all don't, except the employed commuters. A lot of the old Red Car system rails are still in place, imbedded in expensive and old concrete, now covered in cheap and ugly asphalt.
I bet you don’t ride the LA Metro. Me Mum was born on Court Street on Bunker Hill. She’s 94 now. Bunker Hill was ruined by the then city leader that had no vision but were greedy. We did develop a great bus system but that could of been replaced for much less money with electric buses instead of the dumb train system.
That dumb train system as you call it is a replacement for the once extensive system that existed at one time.When I was a boy the Pacific Electric and Yellow cars could take you anywhere you chose.That all ended, replaced by buses.The current system uses as much of the old R.O.W.as is available. As for your closing comments, all can say is ignorance is its own reward
@@robertnielsen2461 well Sir you misunderstand what trains I’m referring to as dumb. The original street car system was GREAT. The current Metro is what I’m calling dumb, over subsidized and joke. I think we should of kept and modernized the old Red/Green and yellow car’s just as we should have revitalized Bunker Hill not tear down and build High rises.
Let the truth be known, the Pacific Red Car Line operated in the red for many years. The new rails won’t be profitable nor safe either. You need a populace of law abiding citizens. So, unfortunately, not happening. Sad.
@@issness_god Thank you for the kind comment. The show runs 52 minutes and it took me 4 years to complete. I worked on it off and on and finally promised myself to get it done. I'm thinking around 1999 was the start. The music is from actual Edison cyliders played on a 1915 Amberola phonograph.
*To resolve the growing traffic problem, poor people should not be legally allowed to own a private car. Public transportation is good enough for them.*
@@james_t_kirk Welfare is no good as well as gigantic freeways. The places where urban freeways have been torn down like in San Francisco have also seen the car traffic go down. LA had long ago an efficient public transportation system; gigantic freeways are not the solution. Social selfishness neither.
ya know if you life in a place where you have the option to walk/transit, the cost of maintaining/filling up ur personal vehicle actually goes down. Crazy thought right? It's not like Americans spend thousands of dollars a year to maintain their only method of leaving the house (along with their taxdollars to subsidize increased road maintenance) more than any other developed nation
