Map of LA Mass transit
Thread started by
FuzzBeast at 06.7.07 - 2:46 am
...from 1920
larger:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/69/Relief_map_Pacific_Electric_Railway.jpg
versus now:
http://www.mta.net/images/rail_map.pdf
this is light rail only (red cars), there were bus line starting around WWI and heavy rail that ran all the places it runs now...
something about this makes me VERY sad.
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Most anyone cycling today (including me) is too young to remember the big red cars. The last line, from L.A. to Long Beach, stopped running in 1960 or so.
Just for fun, A friend and I walked the Pacific Electric right of way from Santa Ana to the county line at Cerritos, about 16 miles, last month. The rail bed is mostly still there, like a long narrow scar when you look at it with Google's satellite map. Some amazing infrastructure is still standing, such as the wonderful rail bridge over the Santa Ana River. It must have been too expensive to tear it down, so they just left it and sealed off each side with fencing. There is also a cool brick power substation, which is being preserved, at the end of the line in Sant Ana.
Unfortunatly the trail is not a good cycling option. The path is regularly interupted by city storage yards, nurserys, a Costco parking lot and major street crossings. Aside from that, my experience with rail road right of ways is they are breeding grounds for thorn weeds!
Does anyone remember the elevated wood bike road from Pasadena to L.A.? That one was torn down in the 1920's or so. Some amazing photos of it still exist.
Creative Thing06.7.07 - 9:07 am
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I was talking more about the fact that LA used to have the largest electric railway in th world... now we have a pitiful excuse for a mass transit system... but yes, even as rail trails it would be a great thing.
FuzzBeast06.7.07 - 9:31 am
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look at all that beach action.
that is sad.
cured106.7.07 - 9:46 am
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Found this on Pasadena Weekly web site:
In Pasadena, the golden age of cycling coincided with the city's settlement at the turn of the last century. In fact, Pasadena's first streets were designed specifically for bicycles, pedestrians and light rail trolleys.
Back then, former Pasadena Mayor Horace Dobbins developed an elevated bike path known as the cycle-way, which linked Pasadena to downtown Los Angeles. Now regarded as a forerunner to the freeway, the bike path was hailed in a November 1901 issue of Good Roads Magazine as “the strangest and most interesting of links — a magnificent, elevated cycle-way, with a smooth surface of wood, running for nine miles through beautiful country, flanked by green hills, and affording views at every point of the snow-clad Sierras.”
How much would it cost to build a "cycle-way" now?
Creative Thing06.7.07 - 10:14 am
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For sure our mass transit system sucks-and it used to be so good. Perhaps in the future, when we run low on oil, freeways will be converted to light rail and "cycle-ways", eh? The system is already there on the Green Line in the middle of the 105.
Creative Thing06.7.07 - 10:21 am
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I saw that map a few months back and i got a little tear in my eye and realized that we need to do an all-city, all-county, all-region, Red Car Ride. With ridazz converging on down town from all parts of L.A., OC and beyond via the many red car routes. To redraw that map with our bodies.
II know, know its just a pipe dream (quite literally) but some day it will happen.
trickmilla06.7.07 - 10:57 am
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Hey Fuzzbeast, thanks for posting that. Really interesting.
City Hobgoblin06.7.07 - 11:00 am
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Borfo ...
That literally made my stomach turn.
Thats the first time i have ever looked at a graphic and felt a convultion of sorrow, anger, and frustration.
Damn Uttopia!
trickmilla06.7.07 - 11:39 am
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Clearly the first step to improving LA mass transit is to turn the gold line pink. Then everything else falls in place.
City Hobgoblin06.7.07 - 3:34 pm
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The all city ride is a great idea. I'd like to do one past Waxman's office to protest how he killed the modern red line. What a worthless little turd.
NixonTwin06.7.07 - 7:37 pm
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Ridazz Roulette!