Green 1543 at Willow Street
By Stephen Dudley
Green car 1543 in October 1960 as the rear car of a southbound train arriving at Willow Street in Long Beach.
Stephen Dudley Photo and Collection
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Dear all, what a wonderful pictures of these amazing Red Cars and indeed as I understood history, a big shame that local government would not or could not (?) prevent the abolishment of this great urban public mass transportation system. Was it all mainly a GM & friends conspiracy?
The picture shown here of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority hides a number of ugly truths: The old cars ran on tracks the LAMTA did not own and had a hard time leasing from the Southern Pacific. The green car was fixed up in the open air because the only shop facilities were not even in a building. The tracks here shortly ran down the middle of American Ave. which I remember well was a six lane street. Even then the trains did NOT have an exclusive right of way over the autos – and a auto had to go in front of a train to make a left hand turn. There was a single wig wag signal here ( not including another for the Newport Beach line that branched off here and had occasional freights with SW-7’s ) that would get smacked by a passing truck which bent it! I once walked across the street to the substation ( sort of Classic Revival architecture ) and photographed a very old portable substation with a wood body parked on the siding. By modern standards an open invitation for arsonists ! There was no conspiracy here – only resignation it wasn’t worth saving.
It is really a shame that the bus lines took over. This Pacific Electric went everywhere and instead of fixing the tracks and renovating the trains, the Metro now, is spending billions on trains that go absolutely nowhere!
What they should have done for “LA” long ago after the PE was dismantled is to make an
1. L going from Florence and La Cienega all the way up to Sunset.
2. The planned Sepulveda line should be designed to go from Granada Hills all the way down to the West part of Long Beach where the 710 ends.
3. Make the Blue Line extend up to Pasadena, Glendale, Burbank and back down South to East Long Beach.
4. Keep the Red and Purple lines but extend them to the beach and then split them off North and Southbound heading past downtown so they can get to communities south and North of downtown.
5. And lastly, the expo line is fine going to the beach, but should have been a high speed rail extending out to past downtown, El Monte, Moreno Valley, Ontario, Pomona, and San Bernardino; higher population cities needing to get into town for work.
That is six lines that go where people need to go, and not 50 lines that go nowhere. Billions would have been saved!