Above, Pacific Electric map, 1925, from the Dorothy Peyton Gray Transportation Library.
Daily Mirror regulars will recall that I often say the transportation plans done over the last century for Los Angeles would fill a library. OK, I found the library. This is so cool!
A 1925 rapid transit plan for the Los Angeles area.
A 1954 concept drawing of a monorail station at Glendale and Sunset boulevards. I don’t suppose there’s any point in saying this didn’t get built.
ladailymirror.com 
Wow very cool indeed. All the stop names on the Red Car lines…Loftus, Dill, Shirley…what did they signify? Little hamlets swallowed up by sprawl? Great find, thank you!
–I honestly don’t have an answer for that. Maybe another reader can help us out!
–Larry
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A lot of these names came from
railway stops and new subdivisions. For Example in
North Hollywood there were areas such as Lankershim, Sherman, Ethel, chandler. A lot were named after real estate developers and associates as well as friends and those in the railroad industry
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Larry:
Some of my favorite things. Interesting in the 1925 plan that they were already stuffed to the gills with streetcars and “light rail” (it wasn’t called that then) and yet they knew that we needed MORE, including subways. Not sure if that was to supplement the PE and LA Railway, or to replace them, but it looks like it was to supplement them. I guess freeways were not even a twinkle in anyone’s eye at that point.
Looks like they planned a subway going up 7th and 3rd Street, and one going up to Hollywood. No subway along Wilshire, oddly enough, but Wilshire was just beginning to be developed in 1925. Also putting the Pico Blvd. streetcar underground through downtown.
Looks like they wanted elevated trains going up the Los Angeles River, and up the Arroyo, like people have suggested recently. Some things never change.
–I recall from my years on the 1947project that I came across references to a building subway in downtown L.A. And don’t forget the streetcar tunnel from Glendale Boulevard to the Subway Terminal Building, constructed to ease traffic.
–But you’re right. Some things don’t change. One reason I keep posting historic material on transportation is to show that getting around L.A. is a 100-year-old problem–at least.
–Larry
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