Tuesday, October 23, 2007

The Largest Electric Railway in the US (LARY)

My favorite topic - Mass Transit is on my mind again....

Today, transportation in Los Angeles is definitely driven by the car, however for 90 years (1873-1963), the city boasted the largest railway system in the United States. LARY (Los Angeles Railway) covered 600 miles of tracks, and operated over 1,200 cars at its peak...."The Los Angeles streetcar system was by far the largest streetcar system ever constructed, and was instrumental in shaping the early development pattern of Los Angeles."

So.... what happened? Freeways happened. And that is another story...

The CRA-LA (Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles) has a plan to resurrect the Red Car line in areas of Downtown LA. With all the converted work-live lofts in downtown, the neighborhood would greatly benefit by the revival of this public transportation infrastructure. It would revitalize the community and enrich the urban fabric of downtown. In 2003, San Pedro successfully implemented the Red Car Trolley line at the Port of Los Angeles. Why isn't LA following suit?

It could be that the owners of the converted condos are not actually living downtown. They are investors. As speculated by a urban designer I know at Moule Polyzoides, the real community will be in a few years after the initial turn-over occurs; the second owners will reside in the heart of downtown. Hopefully, they will have one family car, take the subway and ride the street car. They will shop, work and live in downtown.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

People frequently confuse Los Angeles Railway (the yellow cars) with the Pacific Electric Railway (the red cars). Pacific Electric was like today's metrolink, interurban rail service traveling over longer distances - It ran 1,100 miles throughout Los Angeles and also to Riverside, San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange counties. LARy was the urban transit system with 642 miles of streetcar service connecting the city center with neighborhoods north, south, east and west of downtown, as well as with Pacific Electric, and Los Angeles Motorcoach bus lines. The CRA could have done a little more research and been correct in proposing to revive the LARy streetcar system in Downtown, but the Red Car myth dominates....The Library of Congress has an online exhibit of Los Angeles maps, one of them shows the Red Car and Yellow Car routes in 1906:
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/lamapped/lamapped-exhibit.html Both systems peaked in track miles by 1924. Here's a link to an LARy map from 1938: http://www.metro.net/images/librarymaps_f23.jpg

QT said...

Thanks for the clarification! The links to the old maps is indispensable.