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UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Jitneys, Buses, and Public Transportation in Twentieth Century Los Angeles Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6rm2r71d Author Stroup, James Nicholas Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Jitneys, Buses, and Public Transportation in Twentieth Century Los Angeles A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History by James Nicholas Stroup Dissertation Committee: Dr. Catherine Gudis, Chairperson Dr. Brian D. Lloyd Dr. Dana J. Simmons Copyright by James Nicholas Stroup 2015 The Dissertation of James Nicholas Stroup is approved: Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS If this dissertation were written all on my own it would be the first in history. I was heartened, encouraged, and supported by many people throughout the research and writing and I am indebted to them. The University of California Transportation Center was gracious enough to provide a year’s worth of funding that helped supplement the researching portion of this work; I’m grateful that UCTC stepped outside of its traditional practice of funding scientific projects and took a chance on a humanities study, which they do every so often. I was also awarded the Haynes Lindley Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship to support the writing of this project, without which this dissertation would not yet be completed. The Haynes Foundation has for many years supported valuable work in urban history, spreading the wealth to lots of different kinds of interdisciplinary study. I’m humbled to have been selected to continue in creating the sort of scholarship that John Randolph Haynes would have been interested in reading. I am grateful to Bill Heard of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority who gave me a communications job in transit and allowed me access to the universe that resulted in this study (although he never quite understood why I gave up journalism for academic work). At Metro’s archive, the Dorothy Peyton Gray Transportation Library, Matt Barrett was extremely helpful both during my tenure as an employee and as a researcher, allowing me full rights to all of Metro’s collections. At University of California Riverside, many people were encouraging in my study and wrote helpful letters that resulted in funding, without which I could not have finished iv this work. Prof. Dana Simmons was always tremendously insightful, as was my advisor, Prof. Cathy Gudis. At California State University Fullerton, Prof. Pam Steinle could always be counted on for a leisurely, but somehow deep, discussion. Also at CSUF, Prof. John Ibson remains a close friend and a treasured well of encouragement—and was instrumental in helping me get to the point in my initial work to turn all the information I had into some kind of useful argument. At University of Illinois at Chicago, Prof. Robert Bruegmann was exceptionally kind to me and showed interest in my ideas from our earliest communication, which was humbling. His attention to my writing and arguments helped make this a better study and I can’t say enough good things about him. Most academics are like aliens to their families, and I was no different. But all of my parents and extended family and in-laws were very polite about the process and understanding of why I didn’t yet have a “real” job. Hopefully I’ll get one soon. My graduate study would have been impossible without the steadiest form of support from Stephanie, my wife, who allowed me to go off into books and discussion courses and teach undergraduates while she labored in the working world to support me and our son, Mason. Her attitude was always one of understanding, her editorial eye was always available, and her pretend interest in my work was always well-masked. No person on Earth has had to hear the word “jitney” more times than Stef and I hope my work here is validation of the faith she put in me to get through the process. Thanks for allowing me to stay in school and not be a full-fledged grown-up for a while longer. v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Jitneys, Buses, and Public Transportation in Twentieth Century Los Angeles by James Nicholas Stroup Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in History University of California, Riverside, March 2015 Dr. Catherine Gudis, Chairperson This project uncovers the role of buses and their riders in shaping Los Angeles urban history in two crucial moments. First, while the private automobile inexorably altered American mobility, the bus quietly became the dominant form of public transit, replacing streetcars by the mid-1950s. I argue the jitney (the precursor to the bus, a short-lived owner/operator business phenomenon throughout the U.S. in the 1910s) directed the shift into automobile-based public transportation by giving riders a choice in transit, ultimately resulting in the end of interurban rail service. Secondly, the movement into public ownership of mass bus transit in the 1950s was inspired in part by riders, resulting in the municipally-directed systems we now find common. This decision to create publicly- owned public transportation occurred in the post-WWII context of Cold War fears of government oppression and socialism, marking transportation as something of an outlier in the cultural construction of social and municipal responsibility. Still, the limitations vi placed upon transit by Angelinos in the form of funding and planning failures ultimately reinforces the skepticism of government as a provider of services. The dissertation intends to prove that riders directed the movement into road- based public transportation in a quest for more efficient transportation that met their needs more effectively than urban rail. It further analyzes the moral and ethical implications of why 1950s Los Angeles—amid a historical moment actively promoting private mobility in the form of massive federal and state highway programs—chose to assume public control of an erstwhile private industry. Public ownership changed the sort of access into transportation planning and operation, allowing ethical and moral issues (such as the social effect of fare increases, union activity, and unprofitable route service into low income areas) to challenge the dollars-and-cents approach to transportation planning previously, and unsuccessfully, embraced by private ownership. Although the boundaries placed upon public transit by citizens of Los Angeles ultimately emphasize ideas of limited government (in keeping with other Cold War-period studies of American culture), the assumption of public transportation under public ownership in the 1950s was an important change in the cultural interpretation of transit as a social responsibility, rather than a private entrepreneurial opportunity. In each step of this dissertation, riders are the primary catalyst, directing the changes in transit through market forces, through choice in the technology they preferred, or through funding of transit projects. Despite all the urban planning and top-down transit schemes—private or public—riders retained the ability to reshape transit in L.A. in the twentieth century through each moment of the city’s transportation history. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: Rider-Oriented Transit ............................................................ 1 Chapter 1: The Jitney’s Influence on Public Transportation ........................ 15 Chapter 2: The Adoption of Buses ................................................................ 84 Chapter 3: Private Gives Way to Public ....................................................... 133 Epilogue: Shifting Interpretations of Social Responsibility in Transit ......... 180 Bibliography ................................................................................................. 200 viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Chapter 1 Newport Beach Advertisement ..................................................................... Fig. 1 Pacific Electric Map, 1910 ............................................................................. Fig. 2 A Jitney Elopement ....................................................................................... Fig. 3 L.P. Draper’s Jitney ...................................................................................... Fig. 4 Boston’s First Jitney ..................................................................................... Fig. 5 Jitney Convention ......................................................................................... Fig. 6 “Just Wait a Few Years!” .............................................................................. Fig. 7 Jitneys on L.A. Streets .................................................................................. Fig. 8 “All Aboard for the Jitney Ride” .................................................................. Fig. 9 Rose and Lena Krautly’s Jitney .................................................................... Fig. 10 “Mr. Wad Says Jitneys Shouldn’t Be Allowed” ........................................... Fig. 11 “Why Such Irresponsibility?” ....................................................................... Fig. 12 “Why Should Not All Automobiles Be Bonded?” ....................................... Fig. 13 “Cockfight” ................................................................................................... Fig.