The documentary mentioned 2 things. 1. The trains never made a profit past 1929 (the great depression). I'm not sure if they said why. 2. The train companies

The documentary mentioned 2 things. 1. The trains never made a profit past 1929 (the great depression). I'm not sure if they said why. 2. The train companies had made deals to maintain the roads. As cars got more popular that made maintenance too expensive and provided an incentive to switch to buses which would transfer maintenance of the roads to the city. Of course I agree that it was shortsighted of the city to let the trains go. They probably should have run them themselves or made some new deals or something. Now they're paying billions to build new lines and they take forever to build. The purple line that goes down Wilshire is supposed to take until 2035! to be finished down to UCLA :( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Line_Extension https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Line_Extension