I’m going to miss my train home … again.
I’m sitting in dead, standstill traffic on the 405 south heading to Union Station.
All I can see in front of me is a river of multi-colored steel and exhaust.
I shout a profanity, curse all gods and then realize it’s not my time estimation that’s faulty, but rather Los Angeles’ transportation culture.
Los Angeles is one of the most populous cities in the nation. New York understood long ago that such a large city would need a solid public transportation system to keep citizens moving at top speed, regardless of how large the population.
Los Angeles, with an ever-increasing population, is now suffering the consequences of relying on private cars instead of public transportation: a notoriously thick layer of smog in the air and the slowest moving traffic at all hours of the day. But Los Angeles wasn’t always a giant parking lot.
Flashback to Los Angeles, 1925. Los Angeles had one of the best public transit systems in the world: the Red Car trolley. Instead of sitting in endless traffic, people crossed the city with ease for only a nickel a ride. How is it that we went from an exceptionally environmentally sound and efficient transportation system to emptying our pockets on gallons of gas, just to sit in our cars all day?
The blockbuster “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” replied to this question. In the final scene, the antagonist Judge Doom admits his diabolical plan: “I see a place where people get on and off the freeway. … All day, all night. Soon where Toontown once stood will be a string of gas stations … tire salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see. My god, it’ll be beautiful.” The protagonist of the film, Eddie Valiant responds, “Come on. Nobody’s gonna drive those lousy freeways when they can take the Red Car for a nickel.” Doom maniacally corrects him: “Oh, they’ll drive. They’ll have to. You see, I bought the Red Car so I could dismantle it.”
While this version of the story had a typical Hollywood happy ending, the real version did not. Los Angeles today is exactly what Doom wanted it to be.
In the real story, the part of Judge Doom was played by General Motors, Standard Oil, Firestone and other automobile companies that joined forces to create a corporation called National City Lines. They pooled their money and bought up the Red Cars. They dismantled the trolleys and replaced them with buses that were built and fueled by National City Lines. Bradford Snell, Senate Antitrust Subcommittee staff attorney, wrote in his report “The Streetcar Conspiracy” that the buses were “slow, cramped, foul-smelling vehicles whose inferior performance invariably led riders to purchase automobiles.”
In 1949, National City Lines was taken to court and fined a whopping $5,000 for criminal conspiracy. Justice was hardly served. Today, Los Angeles’ streets are clogged with products made by National City Lines, and the legacy of the Red Car is almost completely forgotten.
Now, not having a car at UCLA means that you are forced to take these ineffective buses to see any part of Los Angeles outside of Westwood. Today the underground subway system only spans a minute portion of the L.A. area. While the Red Line subway project is enormously expensive, it could, in the long run, be a very lucrative investment. The Red Line would run underground, allowing cars to still exist while car-less students like myself would finally be able to travel Los Angeles with some haste ““ 70 miles per hour, to be exact . Environmentalists would rejoice at the prospect of slowing down global warming, and commuters would finally get to sleep through that extra hour every morning that they set aside for fighting through traffic.
But plans for expanding the Red Line have been halted due to a measure passed by voters in 1998, which banned local tax revenues from funding subway tunnel construction.
We are our own enemy. I say we recount the vote and bring the subway to all major Los Angeles areas.
The next subway line is supposed to run to West Los Angeles, which would likely service the UCLA area, but there is no progress as of yet. It’s time we all express interest in bringing back Los Angeles’ electric public transportation system. It’s not too late to bring Los Angeles the Hollywood ending it deserves and reverse Judge Doom’s plan.
I see a place where people get on and off the Red Line ““ all day, all night. Soon where traffic once stood will be cars whizzing by only once every 10 minutes while underground the whole L.A. population floods the subway trains. I see myself making it to Union Station in less than 15 minutes, well before my train ever arrives.
And my god, it’ll be beautiful.
Want to see L.A. go subway? Send all rants to nhein@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.