Cut Into Downtown Streets and Find History

By Eric Richardson
Published: Wednesday, August 27, 2008, at 03:06PM

Eric Richardson [Flickr]

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — Construction work for the new LAPD Headquarters has temporarily uncovered some Downtown transportation history at the corner of 2nd and Main. Buried beneath four to six inches of asphalt are old streetcar tracks from the old Los Angeles Railway.

The Los Angeles Railway, incorporated in 1895, ran its yellow cars on many streets Downtown.

The more famous Pacific Electric, with its Red Cars, was more focused on service to and from Downtown, with little local service inside the commercial center.

A 1924 traffic study recommended that streetcars be removed from 2nd street to make more room for automobiles, after the opening of the 2nd street tunnel did nothing to help with congestion on 2nd and 3rd streets.

A great 1920 map of Los Angeles railways can be accessed through the Online Archive of California.

Back in the Days Before Asphalt
May 22, 2007

Comments

Dan in LA writes:

I was poking around in the LAPL Photo Archives and found this photo of a trolley heading down Broadway in front of the Pan American Lofts… Turns out it is a cable car. I had no idea we had cable cars here in Los Angeles too.

# on Aug.29.2008 AT 02:45 PM

Eric Richardson writes:

Dan: Indeed we did, until they got smoked by the faster electric cars. I believe the cable cars of the day could only do 8 mph or so, while the electric cars averaged 20+ in town and had electric lighting to boot.

SF still runs cable cars because they do something the electric cars can’t: go up a steep grade. An electric streetcar is limited to perhaps a 10% grade.

# on Aug.29.2008 AT 03:09 PM