Lessons from Los Angeles
The demise of the greatest public transport system on earth is a powerful illustration of the need for vision
The debate about public v private is a somewhat sterile one. Virtually every ‘public’ system includes vast numbers of private contractors, while every ‘private’ system depends on the public sector to get its decisions right.
For the most extreme illustration of the impact of public sector decision making, let’s take a look across the pond at Los Angeles.
Now I’ve never made it to Los Angeles: the furthest West I’ve ever got (or should I say gotten) is Las Vegas.
But Los Angeles is rightly famous as one of the most car-dependent cities on earth.
One of 515 miles of freeway in LA
In most of LA, if you want to move about, you normally have no choice but to drive.
But roll back 100 years, and LA had arguably the most comprehensive public transport system in the world.
Trams (trolleys) in downtown LA c 1917
The wider LA metropolitan area was connected by the “Red Car” trams (or trolleys, as Americans insist on calling them) - a vast interurban network covering 1,000 miles of route. In central LA, these were augmented by the “Yellow Car” trolleys: a further 642 miles of narrow gauge urban tramway (some of it dual gauge with the Red Car) serving 23 routes criss-crossing downtown LA.
So 1,000 miles of red car and 642 miles yellow car. By comparison, the 11 lines of the London Underground total around 250 miles.
The big difference, though, between the railways in Los Angeles and London was that the Red Car (officially the Pacific Electric) and Yellow Car (officially Los Angeles Railway) were street-running systems, at least in city centres. As car use increased, therefore, they became slower. And slower. And slower.
As early as the 1930s, some lines were down to an average speed of 13mph. And, of course, if you’re going to be stuck in traffic anyway, why not drive?
At this point, politics intruded. The myth of Who Framed Roger Rabbit is that the evil motor car companies bought up the tramways in order to dismantle them. That’s partly true: the Yellow Car urban tramway was indeed bought by National City Lines; an acquisition vehicle (pardon the pun) buying up tram firms all around the USA. Given that NCL’s shareholders included General Motors and Standard Oil, it wasn’t hard to guess their intentions. But the larger network, the Red Car, remained in private hands.
The problem is that Pacific Electric was not loved. Rather like the London Underground, the Red Car had been created as a prompt to suburban development. Henry Huntington, the millionaire Red Car founder, became rich(er) selling housing plots, not tram tickets. Once the plots were sold, there was no incentive to keep investing in the Red Car. So tramcars became antiquated and ticket prices rose. Following a 1911 mega-merger, the Pacific Electric had gained control of all competing inter-urban tram operators, and resentment built against what was seen as an unaccountable monopoly.
Henry Huntington - very rich and made even richer
As traffic congestion grew, the Automobile Club of Southern California (already highly influential and politically connected) lobbied for the building of broad, wide roads to ‘solve’ congestion. In the 1930s, these plans included tramways down the middle. But in the 1940s, when LA built the world’s first urban freeway, making it even quicker to drive (at least until congestion caught up) and draining the trams of customers yet further, no tramline was included in the build.
The tramways entered a traffic death spiral familiar to public transport operators globally in the second half of the twentieth century. In 1961, the last tram ran.
This sensational little film captures LA at the pivot point: it films one of the last ever journeys on the once-extensive Red Car network. As we travel from LA to Long Beach, we see endless tramlines criss-crossing in every direction, most now unused. Every so often, the tram snakes around a newly built, gleamed freeway, not yet filled up with cars.
For the next 30 years, LA continued to build freeways but there wasn’t a mile of tramway left.
Los Angeles is a powerful illustration of dynamics that are true everywhere. Each journey made by car makes public transport a bit less viable. Each time public transport gets worse, it encourages the next person to go by car. That’s a vicious circle that is incredibly hard to get out of; which is how Los Angeles lost a tram network 6 times the size of the current London tube.
But it’s also a powerful lesson in politics. There was no inevitability of the loss of a 1,642 mile tram network; the reason why the trams closed is that their private operators were seen as aloof and distant from their customers; unhelpful and unwilling to invest, and with no solutions to today’s questions. By contrast, the freeway lobby arrived armed with plans and a vision. It may have been flawed (I’ll let you into a secret: they didn’t solve LA’s congestion problem, and in the last 30 years LA has built or restored 100 miles of railway and tram line) but it was clear and powerfully articulated.
So who’s got vision right now?
Well, the richest man on earth is Elon Musk. He sells a world of automated electric cars careering through underground tunnels. Here’s a reminder of his dystopian vision, as shown on his own website until last month:
The future according to Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and leading transport visionary
And here’s a reminder of why he’s a carbon fraud.
And public transport? Well, I think we could actually solve congestion (unlike Elon Musk): something that no-one’s done yet.
With road pricing, with open data, with rail competition, with proper urban planning. But when I look at the CPT or RDG websites I don’t (being totally honest) get the sense of an industry screaming from the rooftops that we have the answers.
Nor did the Red Cars.
