Definitely agree. The soon-to-be-constructed East San Fernando Valley transit corridor is going to pass through my neighborhood, and run on an old Red Car route. I'm still salty about its dismantlement, but hopefully we have brighter (and more expansive) public transit days ahead if all the plans go well
The old Santa Ana right of way is probably going to become a Metro line and people are complaining about it. Which sucks because it was there first but then also it was gone. I saw a thing where people said nobody down here works in downtown LA!" Yeah I wonder why?
I rode the red car frequently as a child, sometimes by my self. We didn’t need a car. We took our grocery cart to get groceries, went downtown for shopping. & on weekends went to the beach w a transfer.
Was glad to see that the role of Harry Chandler and his LA Times was mentionrd. There were some elections for transit improvements that the paper fought hard against. Note: the sunk streetcars were wooden LA Railway yellow cars, not red cars. They were equally important in LA tranist history. The substation mentioned was the Toluca Sustation, not belmont. PE had 1000 miles of track, not routle miles. It's like counting freeway mileage by "miles of lane."
I wonder if he has any video of the Redondo Beach Line? One part of the demise of the PE was not talked about here. Henry Huntington built a lot of the rail lines, when he did he made an agreement to maintain the roads along the lines. Originally they were dirt, but as they became paved the cost was much higher and the burden to the PE grew. A lot of the old rail lines were removed for WWII, but if you know where to look you can still find some!
I used to take my kids to the Southern Calif railroad museum when it was Orange Empire Rail Museum to ride the streetcar and tour the barns where they are storeed along with the full sized locomotives in the collection.
We were stationed in Germany and I started riding buses, trains, and subways by myself when I was 13. Had to spend my babysitting money downtown and visit my friends somehow. So much fun.
My home Charlotte is heavily investing in light rail and its effective and source of pride. However they are halfway to finishing a streetcar system that nobody wanted.
Or just wait until the next big earthquake, which'll provide an opportunity to leave the "Hitler strips" in ruins while the rapid transit rail lines receive priority for whatever damage repair needed.
The air whistle on this car is the same one used on the Los Angeles Subway cars on the Red and Purple Lines. Also those subway cars have Nathan P3 horns in addition.
The 1000+ mile Red Car system peaked in 1920. One by one, unprofitable lines were closed, until in April 1961 the last line (Downtown LA to Long Beach) was closed.
Price controls on the fares made the trains unproftable. No profits no investment to improve the service. If the service is terrible people don't care if it is free.
@@simonrunge6323 Transit lines do make money in Hong Kong and in some cases in Japan. They make money from owning land near the transit lines. The Trolley operators and 19th Century railroad barons realized early on that real estate was the real money maker. Progressive politicians tried to destroy this business TOD model but now we realize that it is necessary to make a great system work.
@@simonrunge6323 Does the fire department make money? Does the police department make money? Does the streets department make money? Those things are needed and paid for by the public. Same for mass transit.
@@Jeff-uj8xiThe interstate STUPERHIGHWAYS sure as hell don't earn one red cent, but are oversubsidized with literal hand-over-fist bucketfuls of blank checks from all governmental levels.
+ David Williams What REALLY killed the municipal traction interests was unfair legislation aimed at forcing the electric municipal railways to pave the streets in which they had trackage AT THEIR OWN EXPENSE without assistance from any governmental levels. In addition to what you mentioned, there was also anti-rail legislation passed in congress and signed by FDR, but was created by and lobbied for by the automotive industry and energy corporations; the Public Utilities Holding Company Trust Act of 1935 forced ALL electrified railroads, from municipal to mainline, to sell their electrical generating stations to established utilities which immediately increased the usage rates, forcing many street rail transit systems to purchase buses which immediately proved their inferiority in moving passengers. The mainline railroads were forced to purchase diesel locomotives which quickly ate into their profits; plenty of these went bankrupt due to forced dieselization, as internal combustion engines need much more maintenance than electric motors. The killer line here?! Most of the diesel equipment was manufactured by none other than General Motors; these bastards crowded out other diesel locomotive manufacturers, like Baldwin, ALCO, and Fairbanks-Morse by flooding the market with huge quantities of cheaply-made products which needed constant repair; this bound the railroads to General Motors being their main locomotive supplier. On too of all this, both General Motors and Ford were in Nazi Germany, assisting Hitler with his war efforts!
Let the truth be known. The old Pacific Red Car Line was operating in the red for many, many years. Now,the new rails are becoming unsafe, with crime, like the Chicago and NY rails. Sad.
but I see a place where people get on and off the freeway. On and off, off and on all day, all night. Soon, where Toontown once stood will be a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food. Tire salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it'll be beautiful
An ongoing scandal of LA sprawl is that there is no direct train service between LAX and Union Station. So it takes an hour by bus if you are lucky. You can land at Ontario Airport and get to Union Station in an hour.
Connections like this are no brainer. Plus you have the taxi lobby against such one seat projects . Those fares for cabs are big business. And GM and National City Lines did it. They made billions on it and fought the return of rail in the early years. The Koch's just fought the rail battles in Nashville which they won. And Phoenix which they lost. The public already fell in love with passenger rai in Phoenix.
What can POSSIBLY happen in the (hopefully near) future is that when the Purple Line is extended past the Westwood VA hospital, continue it down Wilshire to then curve south onto (actually under) Lincoln Blvd., eventually going elevated just south of interstate 10. The line would then terminate in a huge station above parking lot "C". Hopefully,such a project will be very seriously considered; it'll provide the very well-needed one-seat connection, using trains capable of handling the high-capacity crowding, unlike light rail....
7:10 I wonder if they realize that the changing consumer preferences and the notion of individualuality they mention were also part of the marketing schemes of the auto industry .
"When Harvey was a teenager, he rode the rails just for fun, and he brought his movie camera along." - why then his film footage shows interlacing artefacts? Bad job, KCET.
I used to use Red Cars as an example of not being too harsh on folks of the past from what we learned since then, what C. S. Lewis called chronological snobbery. Growing up in Garden Grove. As 14 year-Olds we used to mockingly say that if you wash your car, it won't rain, it just floods. Garden Grove didn't consider that as farms were turned into a city, there has to be a system for rain water to drain with the farms gone.
I can't wait until they finish building the rail into LAX. However, I'm surprised you haven't mentioned how disgusting the Metro is. It's full of transients and always smells like a mixture of feces and strong urine I would take the Metrolink, which is really clean and affordable, to Union Station then get a free transfer onto the disgusting Metro to go to Universal Studios. However, that short 25 minute ride in the Metro is so disgusting I usually skip the train entirely and just take my car all the way from Rialto.
It was *never* a case of trains versus cars. It was a case of trains versus *buses.* Don't take your eye off of the ball. The buses used the gasoline and tires, and were "supposedly" more modern, and so there was most assuredly a conspiracy to put an end to the trolleys!
Bus advocates also sold them as being more flexible in their routes than streetcars, which needed fixed rails to operate. That's partly true, but busses running on city streets isn't rapid transit. Pacific Electric's advantage over busses was the dedicated right-of-way over much of its lines. That's why you can get around San Francisco on Muni Metro even in areas gridlocked with cars.
The Problem with the Metro is L. A. City thinks it is theirs. The fact is Metro belongs to the County. Metro was voted in to reduce traffic in the County. First Line, Blues Line from Los Angeles Union Station to Long Beach Downtown . Second best line from Los Angeles Union Station to the San Bernardino county line. Little Metro lines through L. A. city are taking over. They. Diverting Metro Money from Rail Line to rebuild L.A.freeways. (405, 5 -billion dollar fixes.) Freeways are packed. Long rail lines are out of mind from the board. They a little Connector . Santa Monica has two rail lines less than a mile apart. The. board from the City had more representation than the rest of the County.
