Why LA Destroyed Its World-Class Transit System - Cheddar Explains 

I feel like this video makes a false comparison. The claim "Transit was not sustainable because it needs government funds to succeed." applies to car infrastructure as well: highways are entirely government funded and need to be regularly maintained. Public transit did not lose because it was inherently unsustainable, but because it didn't get any funding while car infrastructure did.

American car brain is always a sight to behold. You'll interact with people entirely detached from reality who will defend their right to be stuck in traffic while building more and more roads to the death.

The NYC subway system was also initially privately funded , and it also faced similar issues in the 1930's with profitability. Such a shame that LA decided to completely scrap it instead of using public money to fund it

Ive been called poor and homeless for the fact that I use public transport and have never owned a car in my life.. That obviously happened in LA

I am an American in London for graduate school, and the perception of public transportation is so different here. It is challenging to combat the historic driving culture of America, with the car being a metaphor for freedom and mobility. Folks in London, regardless of scocienecomic status, don't have a problem, but in America, its underfunded, and underutilized, so it gets a bad rep

I am old enough that I grew up with the Pacific Electric. I took the Red Car to LA for a dime to go to downtown LA; I went the opposite direction to go to summer school in El Monte. Because I lived in Alhambra there was a local bus company that serviced the suburbs. Of course this was a long time ago, but I do believe that the demise of the PE was due in part to GM, Firestone and the then ownership of the LA Times. Having traveled in Europe where public transportation is available and cheap I found that I could avoid taxis and save a great deal of money plus get where I needed to go. I am too old to drive now and am delighted that i will never spend a minute stuck in traffic on a freeway because an accident or a car in trouble.

If you travel to Asia or Europe there are dozens of countries that have solved this problem. Cars provide independence but they have been given way too much priority. There has to be layers of transportation choices. From walking to biking to taxis to busses to light rail to high speed rail. Forcing everyone into just one transportation choice is and was a mistake and it’s unsustainable.

If you're American, the best way to get perspective is to travel to other countries and expose yourself to their public transit. I went to Japan for 2 weeks and I know firsthand how reliable and widespread their public transport is.

The car dependency really puts me off visiting the USA as a tourist. Who wants to deal with driving some hire car on unfamiliar streets with laws you may not know? I'd rather hop on a tram, train, or bus, so that I can see and enjoy the place I'm visiting. Last month I was in Dublin and loved the trams. Super convenient, fast, clean, and affordable.

I'm 76. I grew up in LA, and worked downtown as a kid I saw the whole transition take place before my eyes. I'm still pissed!

I live in Melbourne, here we have one of the most used tram lines in the world, I couldn't imagine the city without it. Public transport can take you wherever you want in the city and around, it's an hour to drive 40km but it only takes 25 minutes on the tram

LA then: Who needs a car in LA? We got the best public transportation system in the world! LA now: *Bless your heart* This is why I'm glad Newark and Jersey City has light rail systems. They might not be perfect but they're better than nothing when compared to other North American cities. When I lived in Jersey City, I used the light rail all the time because it was just that convenient and covered so much of an area. The majority of Jersey City uses public transit and it doesn't take long to see why. It's an honorary borough of NYC. And Red Hook in Brooklyn almost revived their streetcar system, they bought Boston streetcars...but they're just sitting and rusting away.

There used to be street car companies in nearly ever city and many towns in California back in the day. Bay Area, Sacramento, Fresno - you name it. Even my small town in the Sacramento Valley had one for decades that ran along the main street from an older residential area to the downtown. There was only about 4,000 people here at the time.

There's been a great deal of research on this and it was the car companies who went around buying up small Transit companies all over the United States and then putting them out of business

There was a brief window in the 1960s when the MTA almost built a county-owned transit system over some of the more heavily traveled former rail car lines, but that was bogged down in bureaucratic squabbles over what to build (monorail, light-rail, or rubber-tire metro) and exactly where to build it. Most of the existing subway / light-rail go through the proposed routes, but the first lines were not built until the 90s and has since been expanded at a snails pace.

I live in LA, and you really have to pick your neighborhood carefully if you want to use transit. If I lived a few blocks north, using transit wouldn't be a reliable option.

While Los Angeles may no longer have the red car trolley, you can ride on a replica version of it if you go to Disney's California Adventure in nearby Anaheim. As part of the construction of Buena Vista Street in 2012, the park's new entrance area, they built a trolley line connecting the entry area to GOTG: Mission Breakout. And our glorious Pyongyang still has trams. We have four lines. Three in operation, with a special fourth meter gauge line ran by the military that goes from Samhung station (Kim Il-sung University) to the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, the resting place of my father and grandpa. The three main lines are operated with Czechoslovak-made trams (including domestic-made trams on the chassis of the Czechoslovak ones). While the Kumsusan line is operated with a Swiss tram retired from the Zurich system

it's honestly just frustrating that american cities don't have world class leading public transporation systems. truly shocks me every time i research the topic. the over reliance on cars and constantly expanding motorways is just criminal.

As a Dutch person that loves making videos about transport & infrastructure, I think it's a shame that those street cars no longer exist. but the highways seem fun to drive on once :)

The solution is simple: 1. More multi unit housing in centralized communities 2. More rail support to different communities and tourists destinations. 3. Get rid of every freeway except for the 10 and the 5. 4. Get Hollywood, the industry not the city, to advertise the public transportation system as inclusive to all, not just for homeless, black, or Hispanics.

I live in LA and it’s heartbreaking to see how much highways and car infrastructure in general negatively impacted the city.

Most cities in the US HAD a good transit system that went down hill. Back in the day most people took street cars, subways.... But today there is a stigma to mass transit. People prefer to ride alone in their own cars. Even the number of people who carpool has dropped significantly. In Minneapolis/St. Paul there was a street car company called "Twin City Rapid Transit Company". It ran everywhere and was fairly inexpensive to ride. It had gone through a few different owners. The last streetcar was famously photographed alight behind Fred Ossanna and James Towley as Towley presented Ossanna with a check. There were even streetcar boats used on Lake Minnetonka, which they had sunk. One was recovered in the 1980s and was repaired and now is being used as a tourist attraction. By the mid-1950s It was purchased by Carl Pohlad (former Minnesota Twins owner, and the founder of Radisson Hotels. He immediately dismantled the rail track system and began operating a bus system. Though some were sold to other cities. There is one which is still being used in San Francisco.

Public transport will always lose money, but the alternatives are even more expensive

The only city in the US that is truly world class is NYC. It's a shame that the auto and oil industry has basically just turned major cities into rest stops on an endless highway. I hope cities continue to invest in public transportation. Cities are for ppl not cars

Literally all they had to do was run the streetcars in dedicated lanes as opposed to mixed-traffic and build denser housing near the stations. It's worked pretty much every time.

The thing sad about LA and US (except NY) in general is that, the public transpo sucks. You must have a car to get around or uber (its also so expensive). Cities like Singapore or Hongkong or Melbourne has an extensive line of rails which makes it easier for everybody to go from one place to another without the need for cars.

I hate it when some Americans look down on those who take public transport as if it's something horrendous. Sure, it's horrendous because it's seriously under funded, but those people think as if they are above us because they can afford a car and a parking space.

When I grew up in Pasadena CA in the mid-1970s-early-1980s, the whole LA area was served primarily by the Southern California Rapid Transit District (SCRTD). In 1976, they completely revamped their system, which had been a hodge-podge of the old local city transit systems they had absorbed over the years. The new grid network was designed to make sure that anyone who lived in the metro area was no more than ¼ mile from a bus line, and that most of the buses on each line ran every 20-30 minutes. At that point, one could ride from Malibu in the west to San Bernardino and Riverside in the east, Disneyland in the south to the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys in the north, with connecting transit to the local systems that were still around (Long Beach, Santa Monica, Montebello, OCTD in Orange County, and so on). I took advantage of it many a weekend or summer day; it was slow (as buses are), but I could go anywhere I needed to go easily-if I missed a bus, there was another along in 20 minutes. The problem, which is why it changed when MTA took over, was that there were a lot of empty buses on the less-used lines-zero revenue-and soon those lines vanished or went to 60-90-minute intervals between buses. It got to the point (mid-2000s) that I stopped taking the bus because it was no longer convenient-the ¼-mile goal and frequent buses were long gone and more lines were still on the chopping block.

LA public transit leaves much to be desired but it's not completely terrible. I've been able to get around Pasadena/Glendale/Highland Park areas reliably on the Metro for years.

For anyone who's interested, you can see some of the old Pacific Electric rail cars at the railroad museum in Perris. They used to keep them in a couple of old out buildings there. It's kind of like an old railcar boneyard. Almost sad in a way.

My great great grandmother used to take the Pacific Electric red cars from the San Gabriel Valley to downtown every day. To this day, there is a relic of the red cars' existence in Duarte: wooden rail ties are laid in the ground vertically along the entire distance of the recreation trail going from Buena Vista Street to Royal Oaks Park at Vineyard Avenue. Not to mention the quirk of Olive Avenue in Monrovia being abnormally wide, since the tracks went right through there.

Today, there is NO WAY you can optimally live in Los Angeles without a car.

I miss Los Angeles. I hope I get to go again one day.

What will happen if the city remove highway lanes for BRT lanes?

Once again Pacific Electric gets all of the attention. Los Angeles Railway deserves much more respect because 1. It carried more people and 2. It lasted two years longer. 3. It ran trolley buses which could have been the start of a vast trolley bus network and 4. It went on 1st St near Purgatory Pizza, or at least it would have.

Start charging car drivers the real cost of the road and freeway network and watch car usage plummet.

As development spread out from the city, billions were invested in highways, encouraging more urban sprawl, instead of updating the rail transit. In places like New York City there wasn't as much open space for new development or to build more highways, so rail transit was improved to service the already-compact area.

There was an additional factor that helped wipe out the lines. As car use grew, transit times lengthened due to grade crossings until average red car speed dropped to less than 9mph. It became faster to drive than ride. This still holds true for the line from 7th street down to Long Beach. Faster to drive most times. BTW, I was on that last red car run.

The car & tire companies, along with the City of Los Angeles worked together to dismantle the city's transit system. The main reason was because of money.

I’ve lived on the west coast my whole life and been to LA probably 5-6 times. Never knew LA had a subway system

00:28: "It may come as a surprise that L.A. used to have one of the country's - if not the worlds - public transportation systems." Me: A surprise? Only to someone who never saw Who Framed Roger Rabbit or understood that Judge Doom's plan to destroy public transportation to build a freeway was described as so insane only a toon could have dreamt it up. Oh, also, spoilers.

I'm watching this on a tram in France. Great video, Cheddar!

It's insane how good it was, not only it could have made money from tourism, but also made less traffic and less polution and noise polution and so on...

Thanks, Natalia for your video. Lots of useful info and thought nuggets for my own rapid transt advocacy efforts.

Miami used to have a streetcar system as well

it is amazing to think that they binned that tram system. The trains are ok in LA but need work. There are trams here in Melbourne which are great around town and when they have their own separate tracks but they can be a bit slow when sharing the road with cars. Ayway shout out to the cable cars in San Francisco, they are the best fun ever!!!

Pacific Electric Railways was an interurban trolley company. Those trolleys were built for long trips and faster speeds and that is why they were so big. Los Angeles Railways was for local service to Downtown Los Angeles and the surrounding neighborhoods.

Great piece except for the myth that "habit" is the reason people drive in LA. I love public transit and live in Echo Park, a neighborhood with not one but three streets near me that used to have street cars running down them. Now these are replaced by busses but the routes are not always straightforward-- for example, about a year ago Metro consolidated, cutting the only bus line that would take me to Union Station, as well as making me walk much further to the bus that I would take to Hollywood, UCLA, or my closest train station, MacArthur Park. My daughter takes the city bus to school but the bus she takes only runs every 30 minutes so if she misses it, I could drive there and back before the next bus even arrives!! Metro's solution to dropping ridership seems to always be to cut service. It takes me 15 minutes to get to work by car, but 75 minutes by public transit-- despite living in a central neighborhood. My choice to drive has nothing to do with "habit" when public transit takes 5x longer.

I can sum this video up in three words. Some rich dude. There we have it, the reason most things that benifit society are destroyed. Rich people who believe they aren't rich enough.

Cities across US are designed to be car centric by its zoning codes. As if cities are designed to serve cars not human beings. There are many youtube channel also talked about this topic.

Honestly the biggest thing stopping me from moving to the States is their lack of transportation - the idea of an LA with a vast tram network would be too hard to say no to

Chilean here. In Santiago, it happened something like that, but in a different way. There was a strong, omnipresent public transportation system of buses, which were entirely private owned; each entrepreneur owned one or two buses, made groups, set a route, and that was it. Very chaotic, and unsafe (drivers raced each other to get more passengers - their wages were proportional to that), but you had buses everywhere. Cars were seen as a status thing more than a transportation need. The government tried many times to put order there. The last big effort was to assign the routes and frequencies and create a system for everything in combination with the subway, called the Transantiago. Big problem, the engineers (I presume there were some, I doubt that), miscalculated the actual amount of people, ignored the actual flux and reflux according to job and work schedules, and in their attempt to discongest the center of the city forced everyone to make combinations instead of taking just one long-route bus as it was before. Result: disaster. The city is still recovering from that and nowadays the system has improved a lot, but, the main consequence was... *everyone who could buy a car, did it.* So, now, instead of having traffic jams of half-empty buses, we have traffic jams of cars with just one person per car. Just like in Los Angeles. I would dare to say that, besides the cultural love for individual cars Americans have, the absence of efficient public transportation, no matter who owns it or what finances it, forces people into buying and using cars.

I am just horrified how we can get around during the 2028 Olympics.

I don't understand why people care if a bus drives past their house or if it's an apartment building next door. No one minds a school bus driving around, how it a city bus much different. But then again I live in Michigan where public transit is almost non existant. If you don't have a car you are stuck. Outside of Detroit or Ann Arbor its hard to even get a taxi if you call ahead of time. It's hard on the poor and financially struggling.

With its good weather and mostly flat terrain, you’d think LA would be a bicycle paradise.

Excellent explanation of what happened .

As Pomonan I am saddened to hear we were one of the first to destroy the system

The reason the Pacific Electric went out of business has to do with LAND and how they derived their profits. Before they built even a single street car line the real estate tycoon bought up much of the cheap land outside of LA. Mostly farms and wild bush country at the time. Then they connected the countryside to the center of the city with street cars. After this was done the land values shot up. Pacific Electric began to sell off this land and pocketed the difference in price as profit. They bought the land cheap before there were any rail connections and then sold it at high marked up price after the street car lines were built. The problem is this business model was not sustainable in the long term. After about 30 or 40 years Pacific Electric ran out of land to sell. So there was no more money coming in from land sales. They had to make profits just from selling passenger tickets but they never made a single penny selling tickets. The result was the fares had to go UP. This led to a massive decline in ridership which cause them to go bankrupt.

The biggest issue with public transit is definitely it’s perception over here. While the US’ might’ve been the best in the world back then a century ago, now, the perception is very different from that old scene’s “why would we need a car?” The problem is personal cars are, absent of all logic, seen as one of the columns of success over here. Buses are for poor people and trains are for slow people. If we changed that faulty notion, to public transit is for efficient people, it’d change real fast.

The biggest problem is the cost of maintaining such a system. In the 50s and 60s when L.A. was still sparsely populated there really was not enough ridership to support the lines. And there were a LOT of lines. the maintenance and upkeep are what really killed it. The County floated several bond measures to try to pay to fix up the system but the voters turned them down. At one point the red car was referred to as a "Slum on wheels". It was just not practical to keep up a train system for 80 years until it made sense

One doesn’t experience self transcendence, the illusion of self only dissipates-🎈

Having to go from one place to another as a tourist in America must be hell...

One big issue you did not mention: trolley cars and interurbans were deeply unpopular after WWI to the point that in 1935 FDR forced the electric utilities to divest themselves of the passenger rail lines. In most of the US almost no local government wanted to take them over, as they would have to have been heavily rebuilt at great cost. Also, by 1961 there were almost no passenger light railcar makers left.

I’ve been waiting for this video forever. Thank you.

Damn you LA for getting rid of these! Bring back the Red and Yellow Cars you cowards! LOL 😅 But seriously though, thank you Cheddar for covering this topic. Also really loved the use of Synthwave music in your intro.

America was coming out of the post war recession. We also had begun hoarding resources so those resources could be kept from the Soviets. The solution? Spend, waste, consume.

Excellent work, Natalia. 😄

And all the people who couldn't afford cars are forced into yet another service that is being devalued because it services the poor.

American citys were beautiful until they destroyed them for cars

I don’t see transit in US cities getting back to the level they were pre-WWII for another 30-50 years. It’s gonna take major reform to the government, how cities are planned, and people opening up to new ideas.

I loved riding the bus after my (second) car in LA was destroyed in an overnight hit and run. I just didn't like waiting for the bus or rude passengers blocking the window seats by sitting in an aisle seat. Now I ride a bike.

There were still a lot of streetcar tracks around in LA during the sixties and seventies when I was growing up in Orange County.

Not quite accurate. First of all, these two systems--the "red cars" and the "yellow cars"--had a separate history. Huntington actually sold off his controlling interest in his Red Car system in 1911, whereupon the Southern Pacific railroad took it over and--with the inclusion of other outlying street rail systems--consolidated all under the Pacific Electric banner. In the deal to sell his interurban system, Huntington received a controlling interest in the "Yellow Car" system which he retained for the rest of his life--although over time several routes were dismantled. Only after the system became part of a public utility in 1958 did that agency scrap the remaining streetcar routes, plus two trolley bus routes that ran for a short time. So in the end, it was the Southern Pacific Railroad and the owners of Huntington's estate which made separate deals to the final owners who chose to scrap the systems. For S.P.'s part, only the passenger service provided by the P.E. was sold off. Freight operations continued on most routes. The P.E. brand and electric catenary even survived for a while. Some lines are still in freight service--so that one can hardly say that they were "unprofitable." Only the yellow car system essentially disappeared since it had very little dedicated trackage as a true "streetcar" system. So to the points: the idea that Huntington dismantled his system after he built and sold off the land in the suburbs he created is a myth. The willing sellers were the S.P. and those who controlled Huntington's estate. Lightly used branch lines began to go out of service as early as 1925, but in the end a core system still existed. That again focuses attention on General Motors, tire sellers and National City Lines, all of which played a part in hastening the demise of both systems in one way or another. Still the systems themselves could not effectively compete with the car culture and massive investment in roads and freeways that were being promoted at the time--all of which were actually a good thing. Up to the time of Reagan's governorship, California did a good job of keeping up with vitally necessary infrastructure projects needed for its rapidly expanding population. Ceasing such investment has left California in its sorry state infrastructure-wise ever since. What was needed though was a balanced approach that could have rehabilitated and modernized core passenger rail infrastructure so we could have had the best of both services. Sadly that proved not to have been the case.

Another problem with streetcars at least as they were was that they ran down the center of the road which means you have to walk into traffic to board deboard in a time before cars this was no issue, but is obvious problem in a world of cars and why modern Street cars are either tight to the sidewalk or have a dedicated right of way and often light rail style platforms

One car for each person is not sustainable. Trains and better urban design for mixed use should be the future for most U.S.

Thank you for this video! Nice to hear fact based history rather than conspiracy theories. Don't get me wrong, though. I would have loved it if PE Red Cars could have survived. Glad to see that LA is investing in rail transit now.

People say that public transportation sucks today and use that as an argument against it entirely. That's like saying the automobile sucked a hundred years ago because there were no highways. Also, public transportation isn't enough. The city also has to be made more walk able, because if not, then there's no use in public transportation because once you get off then you'll get stuck. Also, the market failed at public transportation? Wow, who would've guessed that was going to happen...

Always good to see some light shed on this subject. For a deeper dive check out the PBS doc. Taken For A Ride. If you've ever visited another modern country you realize just how sad our public transit and rail is. It's ironic how bad the US fails at this (and no public healthcare) considering we tout being #1. For a country this large too we are the perfect candidate for a cross country high speed rail system. Maybe one day.

Thank you for sharing..

Trams caught in traffic jams... The author mentions this in passing, as if it were normal. That's the key to their decline. Consider why trams work in Europe today: they always have the priority and can, therefore, be quick, regular and reliable. People know when they're going to come by and when they'll get to their destination.

The problem is that the new transit system are second hand joke services.

L.A. would be radically different today had they bought out and maintained the Pacific Electric Railway, connected the Riverside and San Bernardino lines, put or kept the trolleys in their own reservations, and built monorails or skytrains and rubber-tired métros as appropriate. But the authorities kept bickering over what to build since *1910* and the state highway department decided to build 6, 8, 10, and 12 lane freeways instead. Now their descendants are stuck in traffic. I hope they're happy! 😡

Hopefully we can get more videos like this to raise more awareness of the car-dependent lifestyle that has plagued NA. The more vids like this that are put out, the more we can convince people to change.

Los Angeles got rid of trolleys because Goodyear Tire and the auto industry pressured the state government to rip them out. Some tracts remained that's what the Pasadena Goldline used.

I wonder if cars would be such a big thing if we made auto companies pay for the roads and freeways.

In the eternal words of Adam, “Just build a damn train”.

I'm a rural Midwesterner, who would never consider living in "town", let alone a city. However, old clips of big cities fascinate me. I'm especially intrigued by LA and San Francisco. They must have been wonderfully beautiful places to live in the early to mid 20th century. I can see why many "shivering" eastern WW2 service men decided to settle there.

In San Diego up through the 40s you had to put in a trolley system before you even started building new houses in an area.

Cut out all the costs of an automobile, how much more affordable does California get?

You can demolish poor people's home to build more freeways, but don't you dare build more dense and affordable homes near rich people's homes and cause them to maybe lose a little "value"

Cars should be used as a tool in the toolbox. It has it's time and place but should not be the only option

The killing of good public transit in LA and replacement with freeways was a plot point in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, lol.

Realistically speaking, most public transportation systems, and highways were built without low income and communities of color in mind. From Philly, to Chicago, to Los Angeles, entire neighborhoods were destroyed, freeways put right in the middle, and that wasn't because of the most efficient routes being through those neighborhoods. Redlining ruined lives, slashed people's equity, and left generations struggling to find their communities again and retrieve their stolen wealth. It isn't a conspiracy for business. It's not a corporate conspiracy. It's a racially motivated way to keep white neighborhoods white, and neighborhoods of color separate by building massive commuting infrastructure in between communities

Hub and Spoke seems to be a balance for the United States. You bike/bus to your suburb train spoke that bings you to the center hub(City). Think a bike wheel or ferris wheel 🎡. The city is the center and the suburbs are the dots around it. Have a bike share at the center hub or bus station and you don't have city traffic. But you still have cars in the suburbs for groceries and to go on vacation Etc. That is at least a thought on the idea on how the USA could advance. Cities are not really ment for the population we are shoving in them. Development of good hub and Spoke would allow us to spread out.

Answer is simple: lines were slower than automobile. One of many reason why Japan had to build Shinkansen which literally was the new major line.

LA would benefit immensely from a modern public transit upgrade on-par with Europe or Japan, but having been there and taken the existing public transit I can totally understand why people are willing to endure sitting in traffic for hours and being glued to their cars over there. In my experience the LA public transit system was chronically late, outdated, subject to frequent breakdowns/maintenance, it's absolutely filthy, every bus I went on reeked of pee and diesel, and I learned quickly to thoroughly examine your surroundings before you sit, just to make sure you don't sit on food, gum, soda, the previously mentioned piss, or a used needle. It wasn't as bad as San Francisco's BART, but it was pretty damn close.

Back in 2009 I visited LA, and I would ask around about their public transportation to see a Dodgers game. No one knew where the train (or the bus) was or how much it would be, so I just walked a long while to the stadium. I'm assuming there was no train nearby. Edit: In case anyone asks, I don't like taking taxis when I could walk, so I just walked.

As a New York City native, the subway here is a central part of the city. It I'd one of the largest transit systems in the world. NYC would 100% not be what it is today without the subway.

I really enjoyed using the metro in LA. Certainly not crowded.

I was in Pasadena in the late 1990s and I took the bus to the local mall. I t was clear only lower-income people use this mode of transit. There were many grossly obese people, low-income seniors and children. This continued to be the case in Rochester, New York. When my employer saw me getting off the bus the first week there, they were so horrified that they rented me a car and told me I would have to purchase a car to continue to be employed there. I was informed that it would be perceived that they were not paying their employees well enough if I were seen on public transit and it would reflect badly on the company. I had come from Toronto which has a much broader culture of transit, so I was completely flabbergasted by this cultural difference.