Who Killed the Red Car? | Lost LA | Season 5, Episode 1 | PBS SoCal

[@MadStyle1911]

One of the biggest OOF in L.A.'s history, we had the network already established and yet tore it all down only to realize we need rail transit again.

[@sisigpapi]

Definitely agree. The soon-to-be-constructed East San Fernando Valley transit corridor is going to pass through my neighborhood, and run on an old Red Car route. I'm still salty about its dismantlement, but hopefully we have brighter (and more expansive) public transit days ahead if all the plans go well

[@johnrobertfox7775]

​@@sisigpapi The Pacific Electric VanNuys Line ! 😎

[@nannerz1994]

The old Santa Ana right of way is probably going to become a Metro line and people are complaining about it. Which sucks because it was there first but then also it was gone. I saw a thing where people said nobody down here works in downtown LA!" Yeah I wonder why?

[@pigoff123]

We were stationed in Germany and I started riding buses, trains, and subways by myself when I was 13. Had to spend my babysitting money downtown and visit my friends somehow. So much fun.

[@maureencastillo6278]

I rode the red car frequently as a child, sometimes by my self. We didn’t need a car. We took our grocery cart to get groceries, went downtown for shopping. & on weekends went to the beach w a transfer.

[@ericlindenmuth7517]

I wonder if he has any video of the Redondo Beach Line? One part of the demise of the PE was not talked about here. Henry Huntington built a lot of the rail lines, when he did he made an agreement to maintain the roads along the lines. Originally they were dirt, but as they became paved the cost was much higher and the burden to the PE grew. A lot of the old rail lines were removed for WWII, but if you know where to look you can still find some!

[@kenfrank2730]

Fascinating video, I'm donating to KCET.

[@fishdaddy35]

My dad took the red car to work every day. We lived in Pasadena and he worked in LA on Western.

[@CancelYoutube026]

And people in Pasadena still doing so in 2023?

[@CraigFThompson]

​@@CancelKZbin026No; they now take what's called the "A" line, from Long Beach to Azusa.

[@spacecat7247]

My dad took it from south Pas to Pasadena. School and record shop hunts. I have one of the whistles.

[@richardweaver9682]

I used to take my kids to the Southern Calif railroad museum when it was Orange Empire Rail Museum to ride the streetcar and tour the barns where they are storeed along with the full sized locomotives in the collection.

[@palmplanet]

Great video, love it, I am a huge fan of Lost LA, keep up the great work! I am a big streetcar enthusiast so this was amazing. Such a cool series!

[@TishaJones00]

Played on one all the time as a kid. We “went” everywhere on it.

[@sneadh1]

Was glad to see that the role of Harry Chandler and his LA Times was mentionrd. There were some elections for transit improvements that the paper fought hard against. Note: the sunk streetcars were wooden LA Railway yellow cars, not red cars. They were equally important in LA tranist history. The substation mentioned was the Toluca Sustation, not belmont. PE had 1000 miles of track, not routle miles. It's like counting freeway mileage by "miles of lane."

[@nannerz1994]

I'm relatively new to LA and I always love knowing who the streets have been named after

[@WendyWilliamsLiving]

Granny talked about riding the Red Cars everywhere. By the way, this train museum in Perris is a HIDDEN GEM - it's fabulous!

[@PeterHaderlein]

Love this video series! I hope you can finish the whole set.

[@jeffpetrie7744]

I totally enjoyed this video! Thank you!! And especially Thank You for helping to preserve the memory of the spectacular LA of yesteryear, Harvey. 😎👍🏼

[@mackpines]

Love learning about the history of Los Angeles. And I've never lived in nor visited it.

[@ChrisJones-gx7fc]

Thank you for posting this!

[@hond4h34d]

This is such a great follow up to S1E3. Make sure to check out the Subway Episode in "Visiting...with Huell Howser"

[@jaredpowell2067]

Eat fresh!

[@TimHunold]

Louie, you seein' this!? 😊😂

[@kplante7881]

I love this show! Great episode. Thanks for sharing!

[@spacecat7247]

My dad had one of the whistles from the red car line. I have it now. Love that sound.

[@sauluribe7082]

On hill street was once tunnels in which the red cars went through also completely abolished along with Fort Moore hill abuve it. Really astonishing.

[@CraigFThompson]

And the subway portal at first/second/Beverly Blvd. has been covered up by a housing project, and also sealed with a concrete wall.

[@thomasmoore2877]

I loved the "Trolley Court" housing from the Red Cars! I wish I knew where they were located and if any still exist???

[@socksal]

My home Charlotte is heavily investing in light rail and its effective and source of pride. However they are halfway to finishing a streetcar system that nobody wanted.

[@CraigFThompson]

Yet somehow they wanted the bus....

[@maxxrenn]

One day LA will be a city with public transport, bicycles and few cars just like Amsterdam. We can dream.

[@CraigFThompson]

Or just wait until the next big earthquake, which'll provide an opportunity to leave the "Hitler strips" in ruins while the rapid transit rail lines receive priority for whatever damage repair needed.

[@No1CurrMadison777]

They need to bring them back

[@albertcarello619]

The air whistle on this car is the same one used on the Los Angeles Subway cars on the Red and Purple Lines. Also those subway cars have Nathan P3 horns in addition.

[@maxxrenn]

Love this!

[@tomfitz3324]

The recent guy talking about Metro says the goal is not to build more trains but to use the ones we have, but he forgets the two things the lines need are (1) speed, and (2) frequency. The Expo Line is criminally slow. It should be 25 min from Santa Monica to downtown, whether it needs 100% grade separation or not, slow infrequent metro lines will never attract enough riders. The new Crenshaw Line is also way too slow. They need plans to do grade separation to speed these up and then run them a lot. And we need more longer distance ones to connect, such as from SB to LA and from Palm Springs to LA and SD to LA, with each of those being on the order of 1 hour or 1:15min. That can easily be done for Metrolink trains if electrified.

[@ganginfr4923]

god, I'm crying

[@multoc]

This is so well done guys!

[@Pocketfarmer1]

7:10 I wonder if they realize that the changing consumer preferences and the notion of individualuality they mention were also part of the marketing schemes of the auto industry .

[@Bill-cv1xu]

Video killed it.

[@davidzagrodny9601]

The 1000+ mile Red Car system peaked in 1920. One by one, unprofitable lines were closed, until in April 1961 the last line (Downtown LA to Long Beach) was closed.

[@richardweaver9682]

I belive that the Southern California Railway Museum in Perris has the largest collection of Red Cars. They were formerly called the Orange Empire Railway Museum...It's free to visit on most days and only a small charge to ride the street cars and whichever locamotive they are running that day.

[@rosemarie-dj4bn]

I ❤ those good old trains, BaldwinmPark Ca, had them in the 1961, then the dissapear, i rember seing them .

[@HappyHarryHardon]

Cloverleaf Industries.

[@robertmartinez4174]

Detroit Killed The Red Car.

[@DavidWilliamsaz]

Price controls on the fares made the trains unproftable. No profits no investment to improve the service. If the service is terrible people don't care if it is free.

[@simonrunge6323]

That's why no mass transit in the world today functions without government subsidies.

[@DavidWilliamsaz]

@@simonrunge6323 Transit lines do make money in Hong Kong and in some cases in Japan. They make money from owning land near the transit lines. The Trolley operators and 19th Century railroad barons realized early on that real estate was the real money maker. Progressive politicians tried to destroy this business TOD model but now we realize that it is necessary to make a great system work.

[@Jeff-uj8xi]

@@simonrunge6323 Does the fire department make money? Does the police department make money? Does the streets department make money? Those things are needed and paid for by the public. Same for mass transit.

[@CraigFThompson]

​@@Jeff-uj8xiThe interstate STUPERHIGHWAYS sure as hell don't earn one red cent, but are oversubsidized with literal hand-over-fist bucketfuls of blank checks from all governmental levels.

[@CraigFThompson]

+ David Williams What REALLY killed the municipal traction interests was unfair legislation aimed at forcing the electric municipal railways to pave the streets in which they had trackage AT THEIR OWN EXPENSE without assistance from any governmental levels. In addition to what you mentioned, there was also anti-rail legislation passed in congress and signed by FDR, but was created by and lobbied for by the automotive industry and energy corporations; the Public Utilities Holding Company Trust Act of 1935 forced ALL electrified railroads, from municipal to mainline, to sell their electrical generating stations to established utilities which immediately increased the usage rates, forcing many street rail transit systems to purchase buses which immediately proved their inferiority in moving passengers. The mainline railroads were forced to purchase diesel locomotives which quickly ate into their profits; plenty of these went bankrupt due to forced dieselization, as internal combustion engines need much more maintenance than electric motors. The killer line here?! Most of the diesel equipment was manufactured by none other than General Motors; these bastards crowded out other diesel locomotive manufacturers, like Baldwin, ALCO, and Fairbanks-Morse by flooding the market with huge quantities of cheaply-made products which needed constant repair; this bound the railroads to General Motors being their main locomotive supplier. On too of all this, both General Motors and Ford were in Nazi Germany, assisting Hitler with his war efforts!

[@rufusmedrano2962]

My grandpa worked for the red line. My mom tell me stories about it

[@DerGlaetze]

Let the truth be known. The old Pacific Red Car Line was operating in the red for many, many years. Now,the new rails are becoming unsafe, with crime, like the Chicago and NY rails. Sad.

[@CraigFThompson]

Can you (or ANYONE) tell me when a stuperhighway ever operated in the black?!

[@LuficariusRatspeed]

Judge Doom. C'mon, we all know this.

[@WafflezMCdoodle]

Yupp

[@Munchausen45]

Judge doom… Eddie Valiant figured that out.

[@TinLeadHammer]

"When Harvey was a teenager, he rode the rails just for fun, and he brought his movie camera along." - why then his film footage shows interlacing artefacts? Bad job, KCET.

[@gio160]

Lol what

[@PeeGeeThirteen]

but I see a place where people get on and off the freeway. On and off, off and on all day, all night. Soon, where Toontown once stood will be a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food. Tire salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it'll be beautiful

[@Biggjeffsadventures]

they also made the movie here planet v! in that bunker tunnel

[@CraigFThompson]

SSHHEEEITT! lots of movies were made in that tunnel; "Predator 2" being just one of them....

[@nedludd7622]

An ongoing scandal of LA sprawl is that there is no direct train service between LAX and Union Station. So it takes an hour by bus if you are lucky. You can land at Ontario Airport and get to Union Station in an hour.

[@Westerner78]

Connections like this are no brainer. Plus you have the taxi lobby against such one seat projects . Those fares for cabs are big business. And GM and National City Lines did it. They made billions on it and fought the return of rail in the early years. The Koch's just fought the rail battles in Nashville which they won. And Phoenix which they lost. The public already fell in love with passenger rai in Phoenix.

[@CraigFThompson]

What can POSSIBLY happen in the (hopefully near) future is that when the Purple Line is extended past the Westwood VA hospital, continue it down Wilshire to then curve south onto (actually under) Lincoln Blvd., eventually going elevated just south of interstate 10. The line would then terminate in a huge station above parking lot "C". Hopefully,such a project will be very seriously considered; it'll provide the very well-needed one-seat connection, using trains capable of handling the high-capacity crowding, unlike light rail....

[@sgvproductionz2979]

rail is slowly coming back in LA Metro

[@nakfx134]

it was me

[@spaceviking4966]

HUMAN GREED RUINED THE WORLD

[@RandalF-259]

It is easy for us to criticize now. But it is one of those seemed like a good idea at the time.

[@RandalF-259]

I used to use Red Cars as an example of not being too harsh on folks of the past from what we learned since then, what C. S. Lewis called chronological snobbery. Growing up in Garden Grove. As 14 year-Olds we used to mockingly say that if you wash your car, it won't rain, it just floods. Garden Grove didn't consider that as farms were turned into a city, there has to be a system for rain water to drain with the farms gone.

[@VideoNOLA]

How to make your dialogue instantly dated: Say "like" and "right" every five words.

[@BiotchProductions]

I can't wait until they finish building the rail into LAX. However, I'm surprised you haven't mentioned how disgusting the Metro is. It's full of transients and always smells like a mixture of feces and strong urine I would take the Metrolink, which is really clean and affordable, to Union Station then get a free transfer onto the disgusting Metro to go to Universal Studios. However, that short 25 minute ride in the Metro is so disgusting I usually skip the train entirely and just take my car all the way from Rialto.

[@benjaminlibertarianscorpio]

The automobile killed it

[@CraigFThompson]

More precisely, it was both the automotive industry AND the energy corporations.

[@mikeymutual5489]

It was *never* a case of trains versus cars. It was a case of trains versus *buses.* Don't take your eye off of the ball. The buses used the gasoline and tires, and were "supposedly" more modern, and so there was most assuredly a conspiracy to put an end to the trolleys!

[@JonPorter94087]

Bus advocates also sold them as being more flexible in their routes than streetcars, which needed fixed rails to operate. That's partly true, but busses running on city streets isn't rapid transit. Pacific Electric's advantage over busses was the dedicated right-of-way over much of its lines. That's why you can get around San Francisco on Muni Metro even in areas gridlocked with cars.

[@quaoar213]

Unregulated capitalism.... and Judge Doom

[@drewistheone1]

The Problem with the Metro is L. A. City thinks it is theirs. The fact is Metro belongs to the County. Metro was voted in to reduce traffic in the County. First Line, Blues Line from Los Angeles Union Station to Long Beach Downtown . Second best line from Los Angeles Union Station to the San Bernardino county line. Little Metro lines through L. A. city are taking over. They. Diverting Metro Money from Rail Line to rebuild L.A.freeways. (405, 5 -billion dollar fixes.) Freeways are packed. Long rail lines are out of mind from the board. They a little Connector . Santa Monica has two rail lines less than a mile apart. The. board from the City had more representation than the rest of the County.

[@isaimadrid7733]

What this means is gentrification all over South Central L.A. and WATTS

[@salvadorlopez-beltran6734]

Why do they say "right" at the end of each sentence. Odd way of speaking