My hair (or what’s left of it) stood on end when I read this portion of Tim Rutten’s column on Wednesday about Rick Caruso’s mayoral campaign:
Mythology has it that the old Red Cars were killed by a conspiracy, but the truth is that after the war, people abandoned them for cars and then came to actively dislike them because they snarled traffic. Just imagine a trolley going up and down Ventura Boulevard and then envision the backups north and south along, say, Coldwater or Laurel. You get the picture.
Such statements are usually considered heresy, but in fact, Rutten is exactly right. Despite the prevailing myth in Los Angeles, the streetcars were impediments to vehicle traffic because they moved on fixed tracks in the middle of the street. If something stopped one streetcar, such as a breakdown or an accident, every streetcar following behind was also stuck until the blockage was cleared.
In one particularly memorable example, a car making a turn onto Spring Street from the old Hall of Records got wedged between the northbound and southbound streetcars, blocking both lines for hours until the accident was cleared.
Immediately after World War II, Los Angeles experimented with “trackless trolleys” that were powered by overhead wires but had tires – sort of like an electric bus. Being on tires made them more maneuverable, but these vehicles were more costly than buses.
ladailymirror.com 
Trackless trolleys powered by overhead wires are still used in some markets. I lived in Philadelphia for nearly a decade and regularly rode SEPTA’s 66 line, a trackless trolley which ran down Frankford Avenue from the city line and Bucks County to the northern terminus of the Market-Frankford El.
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I rode the street cars on Central Avenue for 5 cents and then 10 cents. We lived near the red car line to Long Beach too. Something not mentioned very often were the accidents and suicides where legs, arms, and other body parts were amputated. Didn’t happen often, but did happen. My neighborhood friends always enjoyed playing around the train tracks and the parked locomotives. Learned early on not to open brown paper bags left near the trains. Always enjoyed putting nails and coins on the tracks so we could get a flat big penny or nickel, nothing larger as money was tight in the late 1940’s. Clearly remember the bus takeover and how happy the post WWII people were to get their cars and get those street cars off the road. How foolish we were in the 1950’s. But with gas at $0.23 per gallon, cars were king and street cars became museum pieces.
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Toronto still employs trolleys/street cars using electricity, there’s cable cars on hills no less in San Francisco, Vienna and other European counties still use street cars as well. Obviously Los Angeleans are too lazy to wait for the trains now, as they’re always trying to race and turn in front of the them. The people that I know that grew up here in Los Angeles loved the red cars. One would ride from the Valley to Venice to her grandmother’s all by herself as a child, others from their neighborhoods to downtown as kids, and others from the San Gabriel Valley to the ocean without driving. Would make things much easier now!
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Still waiting for the light rail to Redlands (now scheduled to be done by 2015), which will finally re-connect the eastern extent of the old system. Then my dream of taking my bike on a train to Union Station, then on to Dodger Stadium for a game, might at last come true. 🙂
http://www.erha.org/pesystem.htm
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@Trolley Dodger! Welcome!!
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Hi, Larry. I was about ready to call out the pitchforks-and-torches mob when I heard about the Times 86ing your blog, but I’m so happy you wound up here. Great look and feel, too, and I like Ed’s masthead. (Pretty sure I met him at that Philippes get-together?)
Couple of items I wanted to pass along:
http://www.trolleydodger.com/2011/05/31/footage-of-early-la-trolleys/
From Metrolibrarian (the MTA’s online historical folks), some silent footage of old LA trolleys, which I bet you’ll love.
And also on the LA transportation front, the “Rides a Bike” blog, which is subtitled “Movie stars and their self-propelled vehicles.” Funny how many promotional shots used to feature bicycles. 🙂
http://ridesabike.tumblr.com/
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@Robert: Thanks and welcome! Ed was at the Philippe’s get-together. One is being planned for late July. Stay tuned!
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