• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

Photo

Photo

  JANA SUMMERS The freeway system was first introduced to Los Angeles to make getting around more efficient, but with today's heavy traffic, drivers may find themselves moving at a slower pace than desired.

By Kelly Rayburn

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Each fall, UCLA students ride buses headed for football games at the Rose Bowl, getting there by way of the oldest freeway in the Western United States.

When completed in 1940, the Pasadena Freeway, originally called the Arroyo Seco Parkway, represented efficiency and freedom. One could jet through its tunnels and wind around its turns at high-speeds while traffic continued to clog surface streets.

But Pasadena’s was only the first freeway in a region that would come to be known for them. Today, as people associate New York with its skyscrapers and San Francisco with the Golden Gate Bridge, they identify Los Angeles by its freeways and cars.

“We’re a car culture here,” said UCLA policy studies Professor Jorja Prover said. “You own your own car, you are your own car, your car is part of your identity.”

  UCLA Archives Even in 1936, when this photo of Westwood and Wilshire Boulevards was taken, cars filled the streets. While many Angelenos engage in love affairs with their cars, students often find themselves stuck in traffic after football games on this freeway that was once so speedy and efficient. And many, like Prover, wonder why the city does not have a better public transportation system.

“Los Angeles does not have public transportation,” said Prover, who used to work for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. “The MTA is a joke.”

She called attempts to establish better bus and rail transportation “half-hearted” and “perfunctory.”

But during the early 20th century, the city featured one of the most extensive public transportation systems in the country – the “red car” lines.

In 1890, L.A. was a relatively small city of just over 50,000 people. But a new arrival to the region, Henry Huntington, a nephew of railroad tycoon Collis Huntington, boasted of the city’s big future.

According to historian Carey McWilliams in his book “Southern California: An Island on the Land,” Huntington once said: “I believe Los Angeles is destined to be the most important city in the country, if not the world. It can extend in any direction as far as you like.”

And with Huntington’s help, the city spread.

He founded the Los Angeles Railway, which competed fiercely with other regional rail lines before he consolidated them into the Pacific Electric Railway in 1901. During that year, all rail cars were painted red.

By that time, interurban rail lines connecting L.A., Pasadena, Hollywood, Santa Monica and San Bernardino already existed, and the city grew outward with the rail lines.

In the 1920s, at its pinnacle, the Pacific Electric red car system covered 1,100 miles of track in L.A., Orange, Ventura, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

But success for the rail lines was short-lived.

Auto ownership was low in the 1910s, but increased during the ’20s and ’30s, particularly in L.A., where the city’s decentralized nature made automobile transportation more convenient than walking or taking the transit.

And so a car culture began to emerge, even before construction of the Pasadena Freeway started.

Even today, Angelenos want to drive cars because the city is so sprawling, said UC Berkeley Professor of Transportation Studies Martin Wachs.

“It’s not just a material or emotional decision,” he said. “It’s really convenient to own a car when destinations are so spread out. It’s a rational decision.”

But in the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s, the development of a car culture meant the end of red cars.

Many assume General Motors and other special interest groups conspired with city officials in 1940 to end the red car lines, but evidence is inconclusive, according to Wachs, and the number of rail passengers had been decreasing before that time.

World War II brought a slight upswing in the number of people riding the red cars, when gas was rationed, but people reverted back to driving after the war.

Freeways expanded during the post-war era. In 1947, city officials announced plans for the world’s first “four-level grade separation” near downtown L.A., which would connect the extended Pasadena Freeway with the 101 Hollywood freeway.

Modern-day popular literature, such as Walter Mosely’s noir Los Angeles mystery, “Devil in a Blue Dress,” which takes place in 1948, describes how more people owned cars after the war.

“The poorest man has a car in Los Angeles; he might not have a roof over his head but he has a car,” Mosely wrote.

In 1953, the four-level grade separation was complete. The city retired the last red car eight years later.

Since then, L.A. has been deemed a freeway city. The freeways themselves played roles in numerous movie sets, including “To Live and Die in L.A.,” “Falling Down” and “Speed.”

The region, says French sociologist Jean Baudrillard, is unfriendly to pedestrians.

“If you get out of your car in this centrifugal metropolis, you immediately become a delinquent; as soon as you start walking, you are a threat to public order, like a dog wandering in the road,” he wrote in a 1986 book called “America.”

The region’s huge number of cars have caused air-quality problems as well.

Though air-pollution conditions have improved in the last 30 years, smog still exacerbates or leads to health conditions, said UCLA physiology Professor Chris Roberts.

“There is some evidence that exercise in a smoggy environment may cause you to be more susceptible to exercise-induced asthma, or may irritate someone who already has that condition because there are more particulates in the air,” he said.

Roberts added that carbon monoxide, present in cigarette smoke, also exists in car exhaust. He said people at UCLA are less exposed to smog than those living farther from the ocean.

Because of traffic and smog problems, many groups attempt to lessen the number of cars traveling in L.A.

Besides establishing more bus routes and efforts to move people via subway – which have not been nearly as successful as attempts in the San Francisco Bay area, New York City and Boston – some programs provide incentives for people to carpool.

For 25 years, an organization called Southern California Rideshare boasts of helping commuters find alternatives to driving alone in a car, including helping businesses and individuals set up car and vanpool groups.

And while many complain about the lack of public transportation in the greater L.A. area, UCLA, at least, is adequately serviced by buses, said urban planning Professor Brian Taylor.

According to Taylor, 1,100 buses a day arrive at UCLA.

Even Prover, who calls herself an “internal optimist,” has hope for the future of L.A. transportation.

“If we make a real commitment, anything is possible,” she said. “This city has brought together some of the most innovative people ever. There’s no reason why we can’t do it.”

Comments

Post a comment