Half a century after the last of the lost Pacific Electric Red Cars
rumbled through Los Angeles, a move has begun to return streetcars to
downtown LA.
With a route chosen by the city and an environmental review begun,
the proposed four-mile Broadway-to-Figueroa loop is a modest project
compared to the region's subway extensions and freeway expansions, but
would provide a link between the key spots of the downtown renaissance
and a symbolic link with the city's mythologized past.
Los Angeles once had a thousand miles of streetcar tracks.
Along them ran the Yellow Car Line and the more famed Red Cars, and
since they gave way to freeways in the early 1960s they've become a
symbol of the city's lost intimacy and identity, celebrated by
politicians looking to restore transit glory and by films like "Who
Framed Roger Rabbit."
While the streetcars of memory are invoked often – the city's
soon-to-open Expo light rail line has Red Car tickets etched into the
concrete at its final stop and city leaders on a recent test run shared
memories of riding it – the proposed downtown project would be a far
more direct restoration, starting with the route itself.
"Virtually every bit of this alignment is on streets that have
historically had Red or Yellow car lines," said Robin Blair, director of
planning for the Metropolitan Transit Authority.
While boosters are quick to point out that the new cars would be
thoroughly modern, sleek and environmentally sound, nostalgia is their
biggest emotional selling point.
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| Los Angeles, end of 5 line ine in Hawthorne, about 1939, photo by Metro Transportation Library and Archive |
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Broadway & Olympic 1940 Looking N from Los Angeles Railway headquarters building, by Metro Transportation Library and Archive |
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