Visitors are often surprised to learn that LA had an extensive tram network over the first part of the twentieth century. Many visitors, and even a few Angelenos, don’t even know that we have a metro rail system today, they just assume that “everyone drives in LA”. So it comes as a shock to them to learn that during the 1920’s we had the most extensive electric train network of any city in the world (yep – the entire world). Funnily enough this is one piece of LA history that most genuine Angelenos DO know, and they usually refer to the streetcars or trams of the era as the Red Cars.

Appropriately enough, the reason many people do know about the lost Red Cars is because of a Hollywood movie, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.Soooo LA!

Myths and Legends of the Red Cars

In fact there were two tram systems in LA in the first half of the twentieth century and they had a huge impact on how Los Angeles developed into what it is today, because originally the city was designed around the streetcar, NOT the motor car. What makes the old streetcar network such a relevant part of our history is that many studies have shown that it continues to heavily influence development in LA to this day.

This last point is particularly important, because whenever there’s a proposal to create an express lane for buses, or add a bicycle lane to a street, many of the objectors will proclaim that, somehow, Los Angeles is intrinsically, genetically if you like, a city based around the car. This is an LA myth.

Nevertheless, to these naysayers any attempt to reverse engineer Los Angeles with buses and trains is doomed to failure, because it can’t be done. LA is too spread out, too low density, that Angelenos like driving their cars too much and that they’ll never leave them to use the kind of mass transit systems that exist in many other cities. “I love my car” they say (even though it’s usually stuck in horrendous traffic). Many Angelenos are also afraid of sitting next to their fellow Angelenos on a bus or train, apparently.

So, let’s take a look at some real Los Angeles history.

Early History of Los Angeles Streetcars

The city’s first electric train line opened in 1887 to provide a rail connection to a real-estate development southwest of downtown. This was quite early in LA’s development, the population of the city was by then approaching fifty thousand people after just over a decade’s worth of explosive growth, subsequent to the Transcontinental railroad reaching here in 1876 (at which time the population of Loa Angeles was just 5,000 people).

From the early 1880’s there had been a couple of horse-drawn tram lines through what’s now downtown, but the horses struggled with the steep hills in the area and produced a lot of malodorous manure, so were never particularly popular with the public.

Nevertheless, subsequent to the opening of the first electrified tram line, other routes were quickly laid down. The Pasadena & Pacific Railway was created in 1895, and was a major boost to Southern California’s burgeoning tourist industry, with its famous motto “from the mountains to the sea.”

A couple of years after its founding the company was purchased by a consortium led by Henry Huntington, and he expanded the streetcar network further, as he began to develop much of the land around downtown.

Birth of the Red Cars

In 1901 the Pacific Electric Railway was created by another merger of railroad companies. It was also known as PE and their cars were painted bright red, leading to the service rapidly becoming known as the Red Cars.

The other big network was the Los Angeles Railway (known as LARy), which operated yellow cars. The LARy network (formed by Huntington in 1898) was concentrated on the neighborhoods surrounding downtown, while the Red Car trams connected the city with its further flung suburbs and the wider region.

This was hugely important to LA’s development. Why? Because the streetcar companies were private enterprises, not publicly owned utilities as they are today. They were owned by wealthy real-estate investors, like Huntington (the yellow cars) and Isaias Hellman (the Red Cars), who had bought huge tracts of land all around Los Angeles and wanted to develop them with housing for LA’s growing population.

They then proceeded to run trolley lines from downtown to their recently purchased farmland. The railroad companies were often loss-making enterprises, but they unlocked huge amounts of money from the real-estate that these wealthy businessmen were able to develop in this way. Much of Hollywood, Huntington Park and the San Gabriel Valley were developed at this time with tract housing, served by various streetcar lines.

What that meant is that LA didn’t develop like many cities, spreading out from a central area, with new development mostly taking place in suburbs that have already been built up, adjacent to downtown. It’s one of the main reasons that Los Angeles doesn’t have a high density center, and that its population is spread out fairly evenly across the vast city.

To some extent this was by design, as the city plan called for lower density development and single family homes in order to create a suburban lifestyle that was markedly different to the East Coast. The concepts of the City Beautiful movement were also very influential in Los Angeles at the time. The principal ideas being that cities should be laid out symmetrically, with order, dignity and harmony. Streets should be wide and buildings not too tall, as that would allow a lot of light down to street level. This was felt to be particularly important here because a lot of people move to LA for the weather and light. 

Tram Network’s Boom Years

In 1905 PE opened a terminal in downtown, at the intersection of Main and 6th Streets (a few doors down from where the Hotel Cecil would later rise). It was the largest building by square footage of any structure west of Chicago and was the headquarters of Pacific Electric itself. The top three floors were occupied by the Jonathan Club, one of the most exclusive private members club in the U.S. at the time.

Later, in 1925, another downtown streetcar hub was constructed at the Subway Terminal Building, near Pershing Square. This was the terminus for the Hollywood, Santa Monica and San Fernando Valley lines. The Belmont Tunnel would bring the trams underneath Los Angeles, from Echo Park into the heart of downtown, where passengers would disembark three floors below street level.

By that time Pacific Electric was one of the largest urban rail operators in the world, with nearly 1,500 miles of track and over 2,500 daily services. Red Car lines radiated out from downtown to the far reaches of the San Fernando Valley, Ontario, Orange County and the beach cities, such as Santa Monica and Venice. LARy’s lines were very much centered on downtown LA and the suburbs surrounding it, but its trams carried nearly twice as many passengers as the PE network.

Most spectators at the 1932 Los Angeles Summer Olympics used the streetcar network to get to the venues. Even back then the organizers were worried about traffic congestion around the stadiums, so they recommended the public take the Red Cars.

New Competition from the Car

Unfortunately though, even as the Subway Terminal Building was opening, the times were changing for LA’s streetcars. First of all by then car ownership was sky-rocketing, especially in Southern California, which proved to be fertile ground for automobile manufacturers. This sudden influx of cars onto the streets led to enormous congestion issues in downtown, especially as there were no traffic lights back then and streetcars had to share the roads with cars.

Secondly, the owners of the streetcar companies didn’t make vital investments, since they were never really interested in being in the transport business in the first place, so the network became more and more run-down and unreliable. At the same time the city of Los Angeles decided to put all its available financing into building Union Station, which opened in 1939.

Despite this the network actually saw its highest ridership numbers in the early to mid 1940’s, during the Second World War (gasoline, cars and rubber were heavily rationed). In that period the population of Los Angeles County almost doubled as war industries flourished in the region, pulling in hundreds of thousands of workers from all over the U.S. Unbelievably PE actually saw a couple of years of profit at this time (at peak popularity, towards the end of the war, the company was dispatching 10,000 trams a day).

End of the Red Cars

However, this boom didn’t outlast the war and soon after its end ridership on the Red Cars rapidly began dropping as Angelenos embraced a car-centric, suburban lifestyle. Once again the railroad companies began to struggle financially.

This might have been the moment to take the streetcar network into public ownership and modernize it, but by the late 1940’s LA was putting all its available funds towards the construction of a freeway system (often taking the routes from the tram lines). This had the effect of making streetcar operations even more difficult, since they had to share the streets with all the motor vehicles, but without the benefit of being able to use the freeways. 

By the mid 1950’s instead of taking forty-five minutes to get from Long Beach to downtown it was taking the Red Cars an hour and a half.

One by one the city’s tram lines were closed and converted to run buses. This was in large part because the rail operators had by then been bought by a corporation, Pacific City Lines, that was in turn owned by a consortium of automobile manufacturers and oil companies (this formed a key element of the plot for Who Framed Roger Rabbit?). Their intention was always to shut LA’s rail network down, in order to switch to bus services.

The last Los Angeles streetcars ended service on April 9, 1961. From then until 1990, when the Blue Line (now the A-line) opened, there was no urban rail line in Los Angeles. Appropriately enough the downtown to Long Beach PE line had been the last to close, so it made sense that it was the first to open when mass transit made its return to Los Angeles.

The Red Line (now the B-line), which opened in 1995, was so named as a gesture to LA’s lost streetcars.

How Streetcars Are Still Important to LA

What does that have to do with the LA of today? Well studies have shown that even now the highest density areas in the city are those adjacent to where the tram lines used to run and that in fact as the city continues to develop it still builds more housing in those areas.

So, if there is a mode of transportation in Los Angeles’ DNA, then it’s the tram, not the car.

Now streetcars are making a comeback in Los Angeles. Old rights-of-ways are being brought out of retirement and put to use by the city’s burgeoning light-rail system. The E-Line and the A-Line both use extensive stretches of the old Pacific Electric Red Car network. Los Angeles has the most ambitious program of rail development and construction of any major city in North America right now.

Can Los Angeles Ever Have a Modern Metro System?

A lot of Angelenos would love to see the Red Cars return, but many mistakenly believe that it wouldn’t be possible today. They think that somehow the system worked a hundred years ago, but that it wouldn’t now.

One of the arguments against a building a larger metro network is that Los Angeles is too spread-out, too low density, for it to function effectively here. In that regard it’s important to know that in fact LA is the highest density major city in the U.S. Most people think that this title would go to New York, but that’s because most people are thinking of Manhattan, and New York isn’t just Manhattan. If other major cities can have a decent metro system why can’t LA too?

The reality today is not that Los Angeles is a car city – but that it’s a traffic city. When people here complain about it I like to point out that if they’re sitting in traffic then they are traffic. Many Angelenos worry about their safety on trains and buses, but really LA’s no worse than most other cities around the world, and safer than many.

Public Transport can also be a place where romance blossoms, and even the rich and famous use it (sometimes).

We take the metro on our LA in a Day tour. The E-Line, which we use to get from downtown to Santa Monica, takes what was previously a Red Car right-of-way through the Westside, to the Pacific Ocean. We also visit the Subway Terminal Building to see the old terminus for the Red Cars.

To learn about a relic from the streetcar era of Los Angeles that’s still operating, read our article on Angels Flight in downtown.

If you have any feedback on The Red Cars: LA’s Lost Trams please email us or reach out on social media, we’d love to hear from you.

– By Damien Blackshaw (Twitter)