SUBWAY, ELEVATED Or What? Hamilton, Andy Times (1923-Current File); Jul 18, 1937; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Los Angeles Times pg. I4

SUBWAY, ELEVATED

BY ANDY HAMILTON SlCETCH BY CHARL.ES H. OW.ElfS

XACTLY at 4 .p.m. last March 15 ing and struggle out again at sundown. "the traffic officer on the corner of He did not know that 475,000 would be Seventh and Broadway swore driving their own automobiles, that 260,· softly to himself. Big raindrops 000 would be riding street cars, and 15,· E were beginning to patter down. 000 would be·coming in by . He pulled his tarp closer about his thick It is modern, mechanical vehicles of shoulders. transportation that have caused our traf­ "By the mothers of all the saints, this fic headache-more so than the faulty be one helluva time for it to rain • • • location of the . Henry Ford and I'll never get this traffic unscrambled to­ John Stevens, "father of the railroads," ens of schemes have been suggested­ night •.." are more to blame than De Neve. from highly technical, solidly engineered How right he was! The heavens turned Threading in and out on the same plans to the wildest of crackpot dreams. inside out and unleashed more than an level, we have automobiles, trucks, None of them has ever been carried out. inch of rain during the peak traffic hours busses, taxis, street cars, steam railroad Let's take a look at four of the out­ of 4 to 7 p.m. If you were one of the trains, with an occasional bicycle or standing traffic surveys and recommenda­ for construction in the near fut1;1re. 750,000 trnpped in the downtown busi· · horse-drawn cart to complicate matters. tions for that have been From this subway systen1, elevated ness district that evening you remember And no clanging of trolley bells,. no made within the past t\''elve years. All tracks would ·stretch out in all dil:ee· how it was. The city's worst traffic swearing of cab drivers, no crowding or are the work of well-known engineers and tions like the arms of a giant octopus. tic-up! pushing of trucks, or scampering of represent r~al. thinking on the problem. As recommended in the report this would Street cars were stalled in one solid pedestrians can help the confusion. As far back as 1913 surveys for im· require 85.3 miles of elevated tracks to be line from Temple to 'fwelfth. It took Construction engineers point proudly proving Los Angeles' transportation sys­ built immediately and 155 miles in the disgruntled motorists three hours to drive to our great harbor, our agricultural and tem were -suggested. It. was not until future. to Beverly Hills. Busses were hours mineral resources, our climate, and an 1925, however, that the first comprehen­ The existing 572.3 miles of str.eet rail· behind schedule. Special radio announce­ abundance of water and electricity from sive plan was prepared. It was drawn ways would be augmentell. with 41'.6 miles ments had to be broadcast to explain the the Colorado River. They predict a rosy up by Kelker, De Letiw & Co., consult· of immediate construction and 62.7 situation; even so, the railroads received future for Los Angeles. By 1950 we will ing engineers of Chicago, at the request miles in the future. This would feed more than 100 calls an hour from frantic have a population of 4,000,000 and by of the City Council and tl1e Board of Su· into the subways and elevateds. wives wanting to know if there had been 1975 it will have pervisors. This gigantic network of high-speed an accident. jumped to 5,000.000, The report was railroads would carry p<1ssengers to the It was an excellent object lesson­ it is estimated. prepared on the Long Beach·San Pedro·Redondo district even though we all ate cold suppers and But traffic engi· Some system of rapid basis of a future through two main arteries; to Santa our dispositions were rllined! neers shake their p o p u l a ti o n of Monica, Beverly Hills and Hollywood by Into sharper focus than ever before heads and paint a transit · must be devised 3,000,000 people. It three routes; to the San Fernando dis­ it brought Los Angeles' crying need for gloomier picture. for Los Angeles. Dozens of is contained in a trict by one; to Pasadena, Alhambra and a rapid-transit system. It proved that "It can't be done,'' fat volume of 202 San Dimas by two, and to the El Monte, our antiquated, snail's-pace traffic facili· they point out, schemes have been sug- pages analyzing ex­ Montebello and Huntington Park area by ties are fifty years out of date. It showed "without a mod· gested -none ever car­ isting transporta· three. that if Los Angeles is to fulfill her des­ ern, h i g h · speed tion f a c i l it i e s, Present riding time would be slashed tiny as the Pacific Coast's greatest city transportation sys· ried out. Let's look into street traffic, rapid and would be cut to the point she must completely overhaul her meth­ where people would prefer to .ride fast· tem. Trade, indus· four plans that have been transit in other ods of getting people in and out of the try, agriculture, , a co-ordi- traveling trains instead of struggling downtown business district. water and elec­ drawn recenUy nated plan for Los into the city and out again in their own But you don't have to wait for a thun­ tricity are nothing Angeles, the design automobiles. dersllower to blow up before yap. see unless you of r a p i d · transit This system of rapid transit, it was how badly our traffic needs unscrambling. have a fast, cheap, structures aBd estimated, would cost $133,000,000 to Any afternoon between the hours of 4 safe way of getting people and goods methods of financing it for our city. build. and 6 p.m. will give you a pretty good into· the city!" In 1933 the Central Business District idea. At the outset it was suggested that Association hired Donald M. Baker, a Wise City Fathers in New York, Chi­ our traffic be segregated on different Los Angeles' downtown business dis­ Los Angeles engineer, to make a survey cago, and Boston came to planes-subways, surface and elevated. trict grew up in the wrong place. of our traffic problems. President Roose­ this realization years ago. Each of these Trains and street cars operated in this In 1781 Felipe de Neve should have velt was beginning to pour billions into cities now has rapid transit in one form manner - free from grade crossings­ led Los Ange1es' eleven first families six a gigantic public works program. It or another. San Francisco, which clung would furnish the best means of mass, miles further west. If they had erected was hoped that a rapid-transit system to her out-of-date ferrie:1 for so long, is ' rapid transportation. their adobe houses out near the La Brea could be built with funds supplied by now stepping out. Two fast automobile tar pits instead of on the banks of the Principal recommendations were for and street·car bridges across the bay were the Federal Emergency Administration Los Angeles River, our downtown busi­ immediate and ·future construction of a of Public Works. just the beginning. She is now flirting ness district would not be cramped on subway system, elevated railway tracks The Baker survey, ninety pages long, with the idea for a subway under Mar­ two sides by hills and on the third by and additional bus and street-car sur­ also recommended a network of subways ket street. a river. Seventh and Broadway should face facilities to serve as "feeders." The and elevated railways. It did not con­ be out around Wilshire and La Brea. Mark 'fwain's well-known indictment downtown business district from Temple template as comprehensive a system a!' But who is to blame De Neve? of the weather-"that everybody talks to Pico on Main, Broadway and Hill . the Kelker-De Leuw report. He could not look ahel:'d almost a cen­ about it, but nobody ever does anything" streets was to be undermined with· sub­ Engineer Baker worked out a scheme tury and a half to foresee a metropolis of -is applicable to the traffic situation here ways-with extensions out Fico, \Vilshire of rapid-transit lines radiating out from 1,500,000 people. He could not prediet in Los Angeles. and beneath Hollywood Boulevard. This the downtown business district in four that 750,000 of these would battle their Traffic surveys and rapid-transit. plans plan called for immediate construction directions. These woulcl be: way into the business district each morn· for Lvs Angeles are nothing new. Doz. of 26.1 miles of subway with 15.4 miles (1.) To Pasadena and San Gabriel Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. make an effort to reduce the grinding noise of street-car wheels. Fourth, that the difference in the width of tracks between the two com· panics was a fundamental barrier to com· plete unification. Whereas, the Pacific Electric Railway used standard-gauge tracks, the Los Angeles Railway ran their yellow cars on narrow-gauge tracks. Fifth, that service should be extended on five principal lines. While not in the nature of a technical and comprehensive report, the sugges· tions of Joseph B. Strauss must be care· fully considered in any plan for a rapid· transit system. Strauss is one of America's greatest engineers and transportation experts. He is the man who designed and built the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge. Speaking before the Breakfast Club re. cently he said: give a fast service to the harbor. In "In every major community the prob­ lem of transportation is acute, for trans• time more elevated lines could be added in this direction. portation development has been so rapid that it has found communities unpre· ( 4..) To Glendale and San Fernando.­ pared to meet the issue. We find urban This line would use the present subway transportation facilities of a past age terminal tunnel to Beverly Boulevard. striving to carry on under conditions for Another short tunnel would be construCt· which tht:y were never intended. ed as :far as Temple street. From that "Cities follow the pattern of the side. point elevated structures and surface lines would carry high-spero trains to real universe-a pattern so fundamental the San Fernando Valley. that it is reproduced even in the atom, · namely, a central controlling nucleus The Baker report, besides recommend· mothering its tributary satellites. ing these four major rapid-transit ar­ "This basic plan of city growth intro. teries, suggested centering most of the duces the plan of mass transportation, traffic at the new Union Station, a five­ .for it necessitates the twice year plan to eliminate major grade daily of thousands of people. It puts the crossings, C().()rdination of street rail­ solution wholly beyond the capacity of ways and steam railroads and rerouting individual automobile transport, taxis, of bus lines. busses and street cars." The cost of such a system would be about $37,000,000, or roughly about STRAUSS pointed out that $2,000,000 more than San Francisco paid our two chief means of rapid transpor· for her Golden Gate Bridge. tation at the present time are subwavs By case No. 4002, filed April 12, 1935, and elevated tracks. The subway eli~l­ the city of Los Angeles brought formal nates street noise and interference, but complaint before the State Railroad costs five times as much to construct as Commission. It asked that the commis­ elevated structures. Subwavs cos~ sion study and make a report on the $5,000,000 a mile to build in the down· street railways-for their ultimate im­ town district; concrete viaduct elevated provement. tracks cost about $1,500,000 a mile. The 301-page report was prepared by This well-known trans~XJrtation expert, J. G. Hunter, transportation engineer, however, is not entirely satisfied with and E. F. McNaughton, director of re­ these two types. He looks to the future search. It was confined strictly to the for two radically different means of mass operations of the Pacific Electric Rail­ transportation. way, the Los Angeles Railway and their (1.) A suspended ca1· system. This 1s joint agency, the Los Angeles Motor much like the German "'' now Coach Company. These three means .of in operation between Barmen a n d transportation serve 250,000 people daily Elberfeld. Unlike the "monorail,'' how­ and provide 800,000 separate rides with­ ever, Strauss' suspended car would in an eight-mile radius of Los Angeles. on two rails instead of one. The supporting structure would be single The repot·t recommended closer co­ a post at the curb. The cars would be operation between the two street-railway hung from two o\·erhead rails and would companies. The most important items were: whiz along at high speed above street traffic. First, that the outstanding problem (2.) The second type of vehicle that was said to be the need for not less than interests Strauss would be a special type Valley-This line would exist as a sub­ weste!'ly direction on Hoover and Pico 200 modern street cars to replace the of motor bus which operates on the way through the downtown district from to West street. Elevated tracks would ones in service on the tracks of the Los street level or above it. Both of these Tenth street on the south to the new continue to the Vineyard station near Angeles Railway. In addition it recom­ systems can be constructed cheaply. Union Station on the north. From the Pico and La Brea and from there sur­ mended the modernizatio~ of 300 other Emt>loying rubber-tired wheels, they are Union Station a track would carry cars face tra.cks would carry trains to Bev· steel cars. silent in operation. under the Los Angeles Rivet· by tube erly Hills, West Los Angeles and the Second, that the service as a whole Strauss, however, holds no brief for or over by bridge to the present sur­ beaches of Santa Monica, Ocean Park was operated on a satisfactory and eco­ any one system. He says a thorough face tracks on Mission Road. This line and Venice. nomical basis, but that certain changes study should be made of the Los An· would cut costly traffic delays through (3.) To Long Beach and San Pedro­ in routes and extensions of service were geles district before any plan is adopted. ·: the congested downtown district. From the present Pacific Electric Build­ needed. Los Angeles is beginning to realize a (2.) To West Los Angeles and Bev­ ing a partially elevated track would cut Third, that noise constituted a serious need for a rapid-transit system. Four . erly Hills-The Pasadena line subway through the heart of the southeast in­ objection from the point of Yiew of the groups at the present time are working would be continued west on Tenth street dustrial district. Elevated tracks and owner, the car rider and the public. It on a solution. to Figueroa. Then it would run in a elimination of grade crossings would was recommended that both companies What is to be the answer? Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.