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I love the question posed in the opening of this 1989 video, suggesting that city planners could not have possibly been thinking of what Los Angeles had become: TrafficVille. My two cents: I think this video gives city planners too much credit. I’m not sure they were thinking of anything [continue reading]
Here are a pair of videos on the opening of the first segment of the Red Line on Jan. 29, 1993 — so 20th century! Thanks to the Metro Transit Library & Archive on digging these up and for all the helpful information on the 20th anniversary of the Metro [continue reading]
“This day is here…” On January 29, 1993, former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley stood among a swarm of public officials and transit agency staffers on the cramped Pershing Square subway platform. Standing shoulders above everyone else, including then-California Gov. Pete Wilson, Bradley proudly inaugurated the opening of the first [continue reading]
Today is the 50th anniversary of one of the most important speeches in local transit history. It involved a 1963 vision for the future of local transportation that even included TAP-like “magic eye” machine-readable fare media…and a subway to Westwood by 1968 by the Executive Director of Los Angeles’ first MTA. [continue reading]
With Expo Phase 1 up and running to La Cienega — and soon to Culver City — you can expect The Source to turn its attention a bit more to the second phase of the Expo Line construction. Beginning in late 2015 or 2016, the 6.6-mile extension will carry riders [continue reading]
The Expo Line may be brand new, but passenger rail service to the Westside is nothing Los Angeles hasn’t seen before – it’s just been a long time as in half a century ago. The path taken by Phase I of the Expo Line to Culver City and Phase II [continue reading]
Today’s Expo Line has its origins in a railroad between Los Angeles and Santa Monica that went into service in 1875. The Los Angeles & Independence Railroad later became the Air Line, the direct ancestor of the Expo Line. The Los Angeles & Independence was sold in 1877 to the Southern [continue reading]
It’s a simple idea: Connect the jobs-rich and traffic-choked Westside of Los Angeles County to downtown L.A., the heart of the region’s economy and public transit network. Yet, as of this moment, I can’t hop on the subway in Westwood and make it to downtown in about 25 minutes — [continue reading]
Bus rapid transit in Los Angeles began with the El Monte Busway, which broke ground 40 years ago this week. Today BRT in L.A. has expanded to several other transportation corridors, but this is the original, the grand-daddy of them all: The first multi-modal system in California and the first [continue reading]
Plans for a Westside subway go back — way back. On January 12, 1962, ground test drilling for the subway portion of the proposed Backbone Route between downtown and yet-to-be-built Century City got underway. Governor Pat Brown, Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty and Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Chairman Ernest E. [continue reading]
