The history of the Los Angeles Metro Rail and Busway systems begin in the early 1970s, when the traffic-choked region began planning a rapid transit system. The region's first dedicated busway, the El Monte Busway, opened along Interstate 10 in 1973, and the region's first light rail line, the Blue Line (now the A Line) opened in 1990. Today the system includes over of bus rapid transit, light rail, and rapid transit lines, with multiple new lines under construction as of 2019.
Precursors: Red Cars, Yellow Cars, and the "Hollywood Subway" (1901–1949)
In the first half of the 20th century, Southern California had an extensive privately owned rail transit network with over of track at its peak, used by the interurban cars of the Pacific Electric ("Red Cars") and streetcars of the Los Angeles Railway ("Yellow Cars"). Many of these routes were constructed by real estate developers looking to lure people into their "streetcar suburbs".
Streetcar tunnels In Downtown Los Angeles, train cars operated in the middle of city streets, and the introduction of cars on to lanes previously dedicated to pedestrians, horses, and public transit, created traffic jams. By 1917, city leaders started discussing the need for a system of subway tunnels for the Red Cars to use under and around downtown. Tunnels would connect Downtown in two directions: north to Glendale and Burbank, Hollywood, and the San Fernando Valley; and west to Vineyard Junction from where trains continued to Santa Monica on one line, and to Venice and Redondo Beach on the other. In 1923, the city proposed a large central subway station under Pershing Square, to be the hub of a system with tunnels to the north, west, south and east, thus removing all Red Cars (but not the intra-city Yellow Cars) from downtown streets. The proposed system was further worked out in a comprehensive transit plan by Kelker, DeLeuw & Co. commissioned by the city and county.
The northern tunnel was built and opened in 1925 as the "Hollywood Subway" (officially the Belmont Tunnel) through which the Glendale–Burbank, Hollywood and Valley Red Car lines ran. The Subway Terminal Building was built as its downtown terminus, and envisioned as the hub of a much more extensive subway system. The western tunnel or "Vineyard Subway" was never built, but in 1917, Arthur Letts and other business leaders formed a "Subway Rapid Transit Association" and spent $3.5 million ($ in adjusted for inflation) to buy a partial right-of-way for one through the Wilshire Center area. None of the other subway tunnels ever came to fruition.
The decline of streetcars The 1920s brought two important changes to Southern California: private automobiles became more affordable and were being purchased en masse and the region saw enormous population growth. Ultimately these changes would doom the rail system, as the streetcars were slower and less convenient than private automobiles. As the systems started losing money, city leaders and voters directed public funding to improving automobile infrastructure, instead of the rail system.
During World War II (1941–1945), the system briefly returned to profitability due to gasoline rationing and troop movements, but after the war, ridership again quickly declined, especially as Southern California's freeway system started to be built out in the late 1940s.
Facing financial difficulties, the Los Angeles Railway was sold off to a subsidiary of National City Lines, a holding company that was purchasing transit systems across the country.Associated Press, "Chicago Firm Buys L. A. Streetcar Line", The San Bernardino Daily Sun, San Bernardino, California, Wednesday 6 December 1944, Volume 51, page 5. National City Lines, which had major investments from Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, Standard Oil of California (now Chevron Corporation) and General Motors, began to dismantle the electric Yellow Car system, in favor of rubber-tired, diesel-powered buses (of which GM was a manufacturer) in what has become known as the General Motors streetcar conspiracy. In 1953, Pacific Electric passenger services were sold to another subsidiary of National City Lines. Alternate Link via ProQuest.
Government operation and monorails (1950–1969) The Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), a government agency was formed in 1951 to conduct a feasibility study for a monorail line which would have connected Long Beach with the Panorama City district in the San Fernando Valley, including a tunnel beneath Downtown Los Angeles. Alternate Link via ProQuest. Alternate Link via ProQuest. That report was delivered in 1954, and the agency's powers were expanded, authorizing it to study and propose an extensive regional transit system. Alternate Link via ProQuest.
In 1957, another expansion of the MTA's powers authorized it to operate transit lines, and it subsequently purchased the bus and streetcar lines then being operated by Metropolitan Coach Lines, which had taken over passenger service of the Pacific Electric system in 1953, as well as the bus and streetcar lines of the Los Angeles Transit Lines, successor to the Los Angeles Railway. Alternate Link via ProQuest. Both companies were acquired for $34 million (equivalent to $ in ). The MTA began operating the lines on March 3, 1958. Alternate Link via ProQuest.
Despite the MTA's mission to create a regional transit system, the agency continued to abandon the old streetcar lines and replace them with bus service. The last former Pacific Electric line was abandoned in April 1961, Alternate Link via ProQuest. Alternate Link via ProQuest. Alternate Link via ProQuest. and the last former Los Angeles Railway lines in 1963. However, Pacific Electric freight service ended on August 12, 1965. Also, the Santa Monica Air Line used diesel-powered freight service until March 11, 1988.
At the same time, across Southern California, privately owned bus companies were failing amid declining ridership; however, as part of the Great Society, on July 9th, 1964 President Lyndon Johnson signed the Urban Mass Transportation Act, offering federal funding of up to 2/3 of rail project costs. On August 18, 1964, the Southern California Rapid Transit District (RTD) was created from the merger of the MTA with eleven other failing bus companies and services in the Southern California region with an intention of pursuing the newly-available federal funding. Alternate Link via ProQuest.. As the name implied, the agency was also placed in charge of creating a rapid transit system for Southern California. The agency proposed building a 62-mile rail transit system across the county. The RTD brought the plan to voters, asking for a half-cent sales tax to fund the projects, but in 1968 it was voted down.
Early planning for a rail revival (1970–1980) With the shift from electric rail transit to private automobiles, air quality in the Los Angeles Basin declined precipitously from the 1940s to the 1960s, and left Los Angeles residents especially vulnerable to the gas price spikes in the 1970s.
These forces helped fuel a growing movement to build some sort of rapid transit system for the Los Angeles area, but the efforts would be slowed by the political realities of the region. Los Angeles County includes 88 cities in an enormous county (with its own powerful government), along with the state and federal government, all which had sometimes competing visions of what rapid transit should look like.
The RTD, under the leadership of Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, came up with an ambitious proposal to get buy-in from all of the county: bus improvements across the region along with a sprawling system of 145 miles of rail transit. At the time, the Federal Urban Mass Transit Administration was offering cities up to 90% of federal funding for mass transit projects if they agreed to come up with a local match and operating funds. The RTD took a sales proposal to voters in 1974, but once again a proposed sales tax increase failed. Bradley would later say the proposal was a victim of "bad timing", an eight-day RTD bus driver strike crippled the county's transit system in 1974 and property tax bills arrived the weekend before the election.
The RTD did get one "win" in 1974: the El Monte Busway was opened, a bus-only lane (later converted to a high-occupancy vehicle lane).
After the defeat, the RTD and Bradley attempted to find existing sources of funding to build a less ambitious "starter line", an underground rapid transit line (also known as a subway) from Downtown to the west under Wilshire Boulevard. They saw this line as the "cornerstone" of any future system, due to population density of the Wilshire corridor, at the time the 5th most dense area in the nation.
The small Los Angeles-centric system frustrated the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, particularly Baxter Ward, who wanted to build a sprawling system of less expensive light rail lines across the county.
In 1976, the State of California formed the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission to coordinate the Southern California Rapid Transit District 's efforts with the area's municipal transit systems and take over planning of countywide transportation systems. The SCRTD planned for a heavy rail subway, while the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (LACTC) developed plans for a light rail system.
In 1980 voters passed Proposition A, a half-cent sales tax for a regional transit system. Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn was the author of the proposition, declaring, "I'm going to put the trains back." The ballot named seven transit corridors:
1980 Ballot Corridor Built as Planned projectSan Fernando ValleyOrange Line BRTEast San Fernando Valley Light Rail Transit ProjectWest Los AngelesPurple LineD Line ExtensionSepulveda Transit CorridorSouth Central Los Angeles / Long BeachSilver Line BRT (Harbor Transitway)Blue LineSouth Bay (Los Angeles County) / HarborGreen LineK Line Extension to TorranceCentury Freeway CorridorGreen LineSanta Ana Freeway CorridorSoutheast Gateway LineSan Gabriel ValleyGold Line
Caltrans surveyed the condition of former Pacific Electric lines in 1982.
This proposal envisioned a continuation of the Federal 90/10 match for transit construction. Unfortunately, 1980 also saw the election of the Reagan Administration, which pulled the plug on federal funding. President Reagan called Miami's metrorail a "boondoggle", leaving that city's transit system unfinished. Los Angeles would have to pull back from its initial proposal. The most glaring omission from the initial plan due to the pullback in federal support was and is the future Sepulveda line connecting the Valley to the Westside and eventually LAX and the South Bay. Funding was divided between RTD, which built heavy rail, and the LACTC, which focused on light rail along former Pacific Electric corridors.
1981–1990: Construction begins
The initial plan for the RTD's rapid transit line settled on a route that would travel west from Downtown Los Angeles along Wilshire Boulevard to Fairfax Avenue, then turn north along Fairfax to the San Fernando Valley. The route was controversial, with many residents and business owners in the Fairfax District publicly worried about gentrification, traffic congestion, and parking, but observers believed that the real fear revolved around minorities using the subway to travel into more affluent neighborhoods.
A methane explosion at a Ross Dress for Less clothing store at Fairfax and 3rd Street on March 24, 1985, gave Rep. Henry Waxman, who represented the Fairfax District, a reason to derail the project that was opposed by his constituents by prohibiting tunneling in an alleged "methane danger zone" along Wilshire. This zone stretched on either side of Wilshire Boulevard from Hancock Park to west of Fairfax (through areas of his district where subway opposition was strongest).