Category Archives: Inside Metro

The way they were: a fresh look at 1940s Los Angeles Railway streetcar images and specs

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The Metro Transportation Library & Archive’s collection on Flickr now contains more than 7,500 historic images and continues to grow.

Numerous photographs from the Pacific Electric (“Red Car”) and Los Angeles Railway(“Yellow Car”) systems shed light on our transit history and what was once the largest streetcar system in the world.

This week, the Library & Archive takes a closer look at a 1940s-era Los Angeles Railway booklet containing not just historic photographs, but construction specs for nineteen different types of streetcars that rode the rails in central Los Angeles seventy years ago.

The entire story unfolds over at the Primary Resources blog, including links to the entire set of newly discovered photos and specifications.

Top performers compete in Metro Bus Roadeo

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Operators must negotiate 11 maneuvers on the obstacle course.

Operators must negotiate 11 maneuvers on the obstacle course.

Top performers who operate and maintain Metro’s bus fleet competed Saturday in the 36th annual Metro Bus Roadeo. The event was staged in the massive parking area of the Santa Anita Racetrack in Arcadia.

Top-scoring mechanics team, from left, Angel Feria, David Klinkenborg and Jose Moya

Top-scoring mechanics team, from left, Angel Feria, David Klinkenborg and Jose Moya

San Gabriel Valley Division Bus Operator Mark Holland, and the downtown L.A. Division 10 mechanics team of David Klinkenborg, Angel Feria and Jose Moya, emerged as champions in the Operators and Mechanics categories. They’ll carry Metro’s flag at the APTA Internationals set for next May in Long Beach.

The annual local competition event showcases the professional skills of Metro bus operators who traverse the 1,433 square miles of L.A. County 24/7 along 183 bus routes and 15, 967 bus stops and the mechanics who maintain the fleet of more than 2,200 buses.

Top operator and returning champion Mark Holland

Top operator and returning champion Mark Holland

The competition puts operators through a precise 11-point obstacle course. In the mechanic’s competition, teams of three raced against the clock to diagnose and repair performance-related bus problems.

Thirty-four operators and 11 maintenance teams vied for championship trophies in this year’s event. The trophies are considered badges of honor at Metro.

Life in Compton as seen through the eyes of artist Elliott Pinkney

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Artist Elliott Pinkney on the making of the Compton poster. Photos by Carl Greenlund.

Artist Elliott Pinkney on the making of the Compton poster. Photos by Carl Greenlund.

Lifelong artist Elliott Pinkney, a muralist, sculptor and printmaker who lives and works in Compton, spoke to a roomful of neighbors and students from Davis Middle School at a program hosted by the Compton Library on Tuesday morning. The topic was the original artwork for the poster “Compton,” in the “Through the Eyes of Artists” poster series commissioned by Metro for display on buses and trains.

The popping, colliding bursts of energy and color, barely contained within the 3 x 6 collage of Compton, seemingly jumped off its modest pedestal to keep time with Pinkney’s litany of the nearly 50 subjects that make up the city’s portrait.

It’s a depiction of a thriving Compton, with parks and recreation, established jazz, rap and gospel concerts, a golf course, Compton College and new shopping centers with big box conveniences (where Pinkney buys flowers and art materials), and rocking, spiraling figures of famous sons and daughters who hail from Compton, among them tennis greats Serena and Venus Williams, coached by father Richard on Compton tennis courts. Continue reading →

Hollywood Bowl follow-up: What those people mover and moving sidewalk connector studies found

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Proposed Westinghouse elevated people mover, 1988

Expanding on last week’s story on why there is no Red Line station at the Hollywood Bowl, the Metro Library continues its look at transit access to one of Los Angeles’ premier entertainment venues.

After plans proved a subway stop to be too challenging in terms of engineering, financing and ridership projections, the focus shifted to linking the Bowl to the Hollywood Highland Station via a connector.

Take a look at the six different alternatives considered for underground and elevated moving walkways and people movers over at the Library’s Primary Resources blog.

Fun with maps: Los Angeles transit in 1928

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Since last week’s “fun with maps” seemed to spur a robust discussion among readers, I wanted to post another of my favorites: this Los Angeles transit map from 1928. Click the image for a high resolution scan by the David Rumsey Map Collection. Be warned, the file weighs in at a potentially browser busting seven megabytes.

Click through for a high resolution scan by David Rumsey Map Collection.

In past headlines, I’ve pointed readers to other historical transportation maps of the region, but this one adds something new: A whole lot of fine grain detail of the city’s transit system before the first freeway crisscrossed the region.

My first impulse when looking at a map like this is to think, gosh, it’s too bad we didn’t keep all those streetcar lines running. That said, the Blue, Gold and soon-to-be Expo Lines all run on former rail rights-of-way that you can see here, and each represents a serious upgrade on the trolly service that covered the same routes in the 1920s.

However, what catches my eye from this map is not the old rail lines. Rather, it’s the bus lines — marked with green dots — that have served many of the same corridors for nearly a hundred years. Continue reading →

Los Angeles had…cable cars??

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Cape Horn Viaduct, 1890

This week, the Metro Transportation Library and Archive takes us back 130 years to when cable cars were the mode of choice in our (then) very small town.

The cable car era lasted only about a decade, but the first transit system after horse-drawn cars is not well-known and the images from the Library’s collection are captivating.

You can read and see the story of Los Angeles’ forgotten cable cars on the Library’s Primary Resources blog.

Collectible L.A.: Artists to sign poster series at neighborhood library talks

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Elliott Pinkney's Compton: Number 23 in the series of posters commissioned by Metro for the "Through the Eyes of Artists" project. The posters are displayed throughout the Metro system.

Elliott Pinkney's Compton: Number 23 in the series of posters commissioned by Metro for the "Through the Eyes of Artists" project. The posters are displayed throughout the Metro system.

Here’s an interesting perspective – your neighborhood as seen through the interpretive eyes of a local artist. A poster series here at Metro does just that. It’s called “Through the Eyes of Artists.” The series has produced 25 posters featuring as many neighborhoods since 2004.

The result is a time-stamp of Los Angeles that reveals the communities within. By looking at the poster on a bus or train, we can discover a destination steeped in lore and layered in eras. For example, sculptural olive trees align the streets of El Monte, and recall the original barrios. The bees of Whittier inspired a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier, the town’s namesake. We see the views of Topanga Canyon, the boardwalks of Venice, the processions of Pasadena, the iconic Yagura Tower of Little Tokyo. We experience the fiery twilights of Highland Park, pop culture of Chinatown, the flora and fauna of Griffith Park (at 4,000 acres, it’s the largest municipal park in the U.S.).

And, now, more is to be revealed.

Metro is launching a series of conversations with the local artists who have created these posters. The conversations will be held at the local libraries in the neighborhoods featured in the series.

Artist Elliott Pinkney

Elliott Pinkney

Artist Elliott Pinkney begins the conversation at Compton Library Sept. 13. His poster “Compton” reveals the colliding, colorful energy of the town called Hub City. Next up: Jane Gillespie Pryor reveals “Whittier” at the Whittier Public Library Oct. 6. The artists will sign and give away first-edition prints of the posters, an enviable collectible for residents and art and local history enthusiasts. And, it’s all free.

Is your neighborhood featured in the series yet? Visit the complete collection online at metro.net/art to find out.

Join the conversation! More details in the  news release.

The top 5 reasons you should be following the Los Angeles Transportation Headlines

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Nearly every day, we take a closer look at the story behind the story in selected transportation headlines of interest to our readers.

Back in 2005, Metro’s Transportation Library & Archive was a pioneer in social media, collecting and disseminating news from various media outlets, as well as other blogs.

Six years ago, blogging was a relatively new activity, especially for a government agency.

What began as a communication tool for other Metro employees has grown into a news source followed by transit advocates and fans, contractors, consultants, politicos, students and many others interested in Los Angeles’ “transportation conversation.”

Five years, 2,000 posts, and over 1.3 million emails later, the Library continues to publish news and information relevant to Southern California mobility every weekday morning.

The full story on how the library developed the Headlines, along with the Library’s top five reasons you should be following or subscribing yourself (along with how to receive a daily email digest), can be found on the Library’s Primary Resources blog.

 

Step aside, pedestrians: Downtown sidewalk removal was pitched in 1940s Los Angeles

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Elevated sidewalk proposal for Los Angeles

The notion of “complete streets” has spread nationwide over the last several years, with policies enacted to accomodate all users: motorists, bicyclists, transit vehicles and their riders and pedestrians.

Safe street design for those using roads and sidewalks sounds rather “pedestrian” today, but it wasn’t always that way – including in Los Angeles.

In 1946, a proposal was made to remove all the street-level sidewalks in downtown and move them up to the second-story of buildings.

The idea was to provide “ultimate traffic relief” in the congested central business district, eliminating the need to wait for traffic signals to change while appealing to the business community in providing an extra floor of display windows.

The full story, along with some eye-popping illustrations can be found on the Library’s Primary Resources blog.

 

Sixty years ago, L.A. gets its first publicly-governed transportation agency

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1951: I Love Lucy debuts on television, the Korean War rages on and Los Angeles sees its first transportation agency run by government officials.

The need for comprehensive, coordinated planning prompted the State of California to enact legislation creating the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority, often referred to as “the first MTA.”

After 78 years of privately-run transit, L.A. rode into a new era of regional planning as legislated by the State Assembly with directors appointed by the Governor.

What started as a regional planning agency eventually became a transit operator.

And while the agency lasted only 13 years, the short-lived era included the final demise of the streetcar system, major changes in bus operations and no less than three major rapid transit proposals, including the now famous monorail plans.

The entire story can be found here on the Metro Library’s Primary Resources blog.