Red Cars didn’t just get people from Point A to Point B. They helped to create Point A and Point B. Towns like Burbank and Alhambra grew spectacularly once the Red Car reached them. Other sellers of land wised up and made sure their advertising told prospective buyers how to get there by Red Car; so did merchants and amusements. The system made even the farthest towns and neighborhoods feel connected. — The Los Angeles Times
The trolley system was not entirely undone in part by the nefarious hand of some elite corporate entities with decided interests in seeing an alternative to the then-burgeoning interstate highway system destroyed. Movies like Clint Eastwood's Changeling (2008) and (my favorite) Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) do a more-than-adequate job presenting the system as a great democratic uniter of Los Angeles’ proletariat, which is how many people view the defunct system correctly or incorrectly six decades after its operation was shut down.
The city is currently working on an expansion of its modern-day equivalent — the Metro — that will vastly increase access to the city’s Westside via a series of new Purple D line stations that will terminate near the campus of UCLA. The present east-to-west commute is considered to be one of the worst in Los Angeles county. The city is expecting 78,000 daily commuters on the line once construction is completed in 2027.
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A UCLA study released last year supports the argument that an increase in car ownership has been a key factor affecting transit ridership in LA. Its authors found that, between 2000 and 2015, Los Angeles residents purchased four times as many vehicles than in the decade prior.
“Transit ridership [in Southern California],” its authors conclude, “has long depended on a sizable minority of people who did not, largely for economic reasons, have access to cars. After 2000, many of these people acquired cars, and it should not surprise us that they started riding transit less.”
From https://la.curbed.com/2019/2/1...
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