Public transit in the US has been largely neglected for the past couple of decades, to say the least. Ever since the advent of the automobile and the construction of the national highway system, streetcars and passenger rail services were torn up and left to rot while cars dominated the transportation scene. Nowhere is this more relevant than in Los Angeles, a massive sprawling metropolis that once had the world’s largest rail transit system. Traveling through the city today, it would be hard to imagine how LA could have harbored such an expansive transit system – although the city does possess a new modern set of railroads and passenger service, they are only 1/10th the length of their predecessors. Traveling through Los Angeles can be a nightmare, and as one of the most congested cities in the world, people can expect to face hour-long traffic jams every day. With heavy investments in public transportation, Angelenos would be able to move around the city a lot faster, bypassing traffic congestion on rail systems and taking cars off the road. With benefits like these, it begs the question: why did we ever abandon our world-class streetcar systems?
LA’s streetcar history begins in the early 1900s; created by railroad executive Henry Huntington in 1901, Pacific Electric (PE) constructed local and interurban railroad lines connecting places as far as Santa Monica to San Bernardino, Long Beach to San Fernando, and Altadena to Huntington Beach. At the time, most streetcar services were not publicly owned in the US, but were often run by immensely profitable private railroad companies, such as in the case of LA. At the height of its success, PE became the world’s largest operator of electric railway passenger service in the world, with over 2,000 daily trains running on over 1,000 miles of track. Despite being a century old, these lines were also fully electrified, which kept pollution to a minimum. PE became massively profitable, earning $90,000 ($3.17 million in 2024) in a single year in 1905. The success of Pacific Electric turned Huntington into one of the richest men in California, and it contributed to LA’s rapid growth and development during the early 1900s. The positive impacts of rail transportation were very evident in LA’s housing construction, partly due to Huntington’s involvement in real estate development. Los Angeles was once sparsely populated with communities dotted around the region, but the establishment of the railways “[developed] all the real estate that lay in between the dots.” However, the success of rail was about to come to a crashing halt just a few decades later.
The automobile industry began picking up speed by the 1920s, and with it came a new reimagining of transportation in the United States. Rather than slow, inflexible service on trolleys and streetcars, the automobile gave individuals more independence and control over their destination, time of departure, and method of getting there. The car became a symbol of the American dream, and owning one was synonymous with success. The increase in motorized vehicles, however, meant that streetcars faced competition on the road and had to face traffic as well, leading to a decreased quality of service. By the 1930s, there were plans to construct the freeway system in LA, which allowed automobiles greater flexibility in reaching their destinations and increasing their average speeds, while streetcars continued to be burdened by at-grade crossings that had to compete with cars for space. The massively decreased speeds of PE’s rail system meant that train schedules could not always be met, and the flexibility of the automobile encouraged people to drive a car rather than ride an antiquated trolley system. Profits began to dwindle, and PE either sold off its lines or converted them to bus systems, with the final passenger service being sold off in 1953. PE made a final attempt in 1947 to reinvigorate its services by asking for city and state funds to construct a right-of-way for rail services along the center of the Hollywood Freeway, which was going under construction at the time. The rail service was expected to “transport twice as many people per hour along its right-of-way as the eight lanes of automobile traffic”, but despite the clear benefits, the authorities shot down the proposal because “construction on the freeway would have to be delayed in order to introduce the rail lines into the project.” The final nail in the coffin, however, came not from within, but from the rail industry’s biggest competitor: General Motors.
In an event known as the General Motors (GM) Streetcar Conspiracy, GM was believed to have planned to dismantle the streetcar system not just in LA, but across major cities in the US as a way to monopolize the transportation industry by having people rely on gas and automobiles. To do this, GM “established a pattern of purchasing the streetcar line, converting its services to bus service, then reselling the company,” profiting massively from the process. From 1936 to 1949, over 100 electric transit systems were purchased and converted to General Motors lines. Following this, the streetcar system was thoroughly dismantled, and automobiles dominated transportation.
However, it is important to note that the streetcar conspiracy is called a conspiracy for a reason; General Motors buying up and dismantling streetcar systems could very well have been done in the interest of good business rather than malicious intent to destroy the streetcar. It is true that Pacific Electric, among other rail companies across the US, was suffering heavily from automobile competition and was unlikely to rebound in the near future–GM likely saw this as an opportunity to make a profit off of failing streetcar systems and turn them into bus routes that meshed better into the automobile-focused way of transportation. Regardless of intention, GM’s actions of uprooting rail systems across the US put the final nail in the coffin, putting an end to Pacific Electric and streetcars in LA.
The story of LA’s historic streetcar system is defined by corporate politics, with top-down influence rather than bottom-up decision-making. When it comes to urban planning, this can have devastating consequences for communities that reap the consequences rather than profits. Los Angeles is a prime example: aside from its streetcar systems, urban planning practices such as constructing highway systems through low-income neighborhoods, which are often minority communities, and mandating single-family housing across wide swaths of land are often done in the interest of politics and profit at the expense of the local community. These practices have led to decades of pervasive geographic inequality and car dependency, with the City of Los Angeles only recently beginning to rebuild its rail transit system from the ground up, using much of the unused and abandoned right-of-ways formerly owned by Pacific Electric. Yet, despite modern technology and over 30 years of construction and expansion, the entirety of LA Metro’s rail lines is just over 100 miles long, barely 1/10th the length of Pacific Electric’s full rail system. For a city of its size and stature, it is essential that Los Angeles develops and supports a robust public transportation system that serves its people over profit.