10 ms·

Los Angeles and the 'great American streetcar scandal'

98 points by anexprogrammer 10y ago

crzwdjk 10y ago
One thing that the article doesn't mention but was still an important factor in the streetcars' demise: the need to replace the capital stock. Things like tracks and trains don't last forever, and eventually you have to replace them completely rather than just doing normal maintenance, but that only happens every few decades. If you spread out the replacement, it's not so bad, but I suspect many streetcar companies didn't bother doing that through the 20s since they were still relatively new (and 30 years counts as "relatively new" for tracks). But then the Depression hit and funds became hard to come by, followed by WWII which led to a surge in ridership but a shortage of materials. By the end of the war, not only were streetcars facing increasing competition from cars driving on new highways, the systems were also physically worn out and needed to be totally replaced. Indeed, this is exactly what happened to the Pacific Electric's Long Beach line, just with a gap of 29 years between closing the old line and opening the shiny new one in exactly the same place.
- busterarm 10y ago
  I prefer the theory that (I think) was proposed in The Illuminatus! Trilogy. Streetcars were too fun, so they had to go.
- flexie 10y ago
  Today you have streetcars ("trams") in more than 200 European cities and they have also needed replacements and been upgraded from time to time. So why did streetcars thrive in most of Europe, but barely survived in America? We had depressions and world wars in Europe too.
  - Agustus 10y ago
    Space and gas taxes. Europeans do not have significant amounts of space to build housing supplies, that's why space/m^2 is much higher than here in the states, witness San Fancisco's trolley system that caused suburbanization (or at least enabled it). Gas Taxes in Europe are double than here in the states[1], US gas is taxed at relatively low rates when compared to other nations. Used as a user tax here in the states, its predominant purpose is to fund roadway improvements and maintenance; however, it is used to fund transit and other items. In Europe, the higher gas tax is used to drive (good one Agustus) less travel and subsidize rail lines. The trams / streetcars in Europe work because the suburbanization was stopped by high government taxes and forces the populous to pay more for a lower comparable standard of living. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fuel_tax_in_OECD_countries,_2010..png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fuel_tax_in_OECD_countrie... *Edited for why, if you disagree, please provide an alternative opinion. I have taken the time to provide a discourse, if a downvote to it is necessary, then please provide a reason.
    - Gmo 10y ago
      I did not downvote you but I found your post was reasonable (although I don't completely agree with it) until your last sentence and the "lower comparable standard of living". My guess is where the downvoting come from :)
    - Retric 10y ago
      Suburbanization was heavily subsidized in the US for a variety of political reasons. That just happened to line politically connected peoples pockets. It's actually terrible from an economic standpoint. The US also focuses on extremely local school funding which promotes heavy economic segregation and is extremely harmful for the overall economy. PS: Early on post WWII it was assumed to be a good defense from the at the time low yield nuclear weapons. But, this is hard to trace back and might not have had significant impact.
  - f_allwein 10y ago
    It wasn't that straightforward in Europe either. E.g. in Munich, the tram network was reduced until the 1990s as it was thought underground trains could replace it. That turned out to be insufficient, so now we have both. But yes, it involves significant public spending.
  - Theodores 10y ago
    Well, parent could be correct. Just yesterday there was a post on here about London's bus numbers, those had been inherited from the horse and cart days, been used on horse drawn trams, been used on electric trams, been used on trolleybuses (trams with little rubber wheels instead of proper steel ones) and now used on regular bus routes. Seems that London upgraded transport stock to get rid of trams without there being some huge conspiracy. A plausible scenario could happen elsewhere.
    - aninhumer 10y ago
      >trolleybuses (trams with little rubber wheels instead of proper steel ones) This seems like a peculiar way to describe them? A trolleybus is just a bus with normal rubber tires, that's powered electrically by a caternary.
    - Symbiote 10y ago
      In case you've never used one, a trolleybus is actually much closer to a normal bus, but runs from overhead electric wires. They're still used in some cities in China and eastern Europe. They're quiet, have flexible routes, and zero pollution in the City, and are lightweight.
      - dalke 10y ago
        And San Francisco. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybuses_in_San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybuses_in_San_Francisco says there are 5 such systems in the US, and that SF's is the second largest in the Western Hemisphere, after Mexico City's.
  - busterarm 10y ago
    Streetcar companies in the US almost universally were under regulation where they were legally required to have a fare that could not support the maintenance of the system.
  - anexprogrammer 10y ago
    Trams completely died out in the UK through the 60s. Just one town, Blackpool, kept them. This was around the time Beeching was making devastating cuts to the UK rail network. The belief seemed to be that cars would be the answer to everything making rail and trams go the same way as canals. Until only a few years ago the trams in Blackpool were running on rolling stock mainly from the 30s and 40s, with just a few bus-bodies from the 90s. They ended up being a living museum and they even bought up old trams from other regions. A few years ago they rebuilt the entire network with new modern stock and track, with new disabled friendly stops. It's sort-of a success. They halved the number of stops (due to needing platforms for disabled access), so it's less convenient. They increased the prices, making it more expensive than the bus following the same route. Many other UK cities have brought back modern tram networks, with mostly great success. It's often proved horribly expensive to do - Edinburgh being the example of how not to buy a tramway. The UK is also bringing back some of the axed rail networks as roads become increasingly gridlocked. Of course this is expensive to do, especially as sections of many lines have now been built on. Other parts of Europe, though not all, seem to make consistently more intelligent transport choices, and have long provided more integrated transport solutions.
  - crzwdjk 10y ago
    That has more to do with what happened after the war: America was doing quite well and had piles of money to spend on roads and cars and suburban houses, while most of Europe was pretty devastated and had to spend everything just on rebuilding, without much left over for things like cars and highways, and so focused their investments on public transport. Even so, a huge number of European cities did end up abandoning their streetcar systems, either because the city was small enough that buses were deemed adequate or because it was big enough to have a metro system. The other big exception to the general trend was the Communist countries where public transport was encouraged over private automobiles for a range of reasons. But even in many of the ex-USSR countries, there has been a similar trend of streetcar infrastructure wearing out and getting abandoned rather than replaced.
    - anexprogrammer 10y ago
      UK was a financial wreck at the end of the war, yet still fully committed to internal combustion. We did irreparable damage to the rail network, abolished all tram networks except one, and built huge car-centered networks (spaghetti junction in Birmingham being the most people unfriendly example I know of, especially the residential streets in the shadow of the raised roadways). All it took was a look across the sea to the Netherlands we'd see integrated bus/rail/tram terminals and some degree of planning and intelligence still being applied to transport. We got to sit breathing traffic fumes. That makes me think it was more about politics and policies than money.
    - andys627 10y ago
      Do you have some good sources off the top of your head for this stuff? Thanks.
  - gumby 10y ago
    The primary answer is buried in the article, in passing: "And when even 10% of Los Angeles’ population got behind the wheel, their presence so slowed the streetcars, which lacked their own lanes, that they could no longer make their schedules, and their level of service declined overall." European streetcars typically have separated lanes and loading areas and thus don't mix with automobile traffic. That way they aren't in conflict. When roads had largely low speed and uncontrolled use, streetcars worked fine because people were used to and able to stay out of each others' way. The automobile was dramatically faster and more dangerous, and the laws and infrastructure were gradually adapted to it (e.g. traffic signals, left hand turn rules etc). Streetcars in the US, and I suspect in other places where they have failed, had to intermix with automobiles, which lead them into a deadly spiral. The other factors mentioned in the article (reluctance to spend, reluctance to run a centralized system, regulation, etc etc) applied in Europe too -- we have a survivorship bias when we see the streetcars in Europe. Look at Berlin as a great A/B experiment: in the west the streetcars were torn up while in the east they were retained. I much prefer living in the east (today!! not under communism) because the Straßenbahn is so convenient. My kid took it to school. Some streetcars survive or have been revived in the US -- it's called "light rail" because I suppose "streetcar" is a laden word. They pretty much all have dedicated right of ways, and if not (I'm thinking of parts of San Francisco's MUNI) they have dedicated loading areas and exclusion zones -- except for cable cars :-)
    - aomurphy 10y ago
      Yes, and not only that, American streetcars had often gotten rights to build track from the city in return for responsibility to repair the streets the tracks were on. Which was a fine deal when there was only foot and horse traffic, but put them in an untenable situation when suddenly cars (which cause much more wear and tear on streets then people or horses) became popular.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    Europe also got bombed to pieces, major cities had to be rebuilt anyway, and Eastern Europe didn't have the wealth that post WWII-America did, so trams were more an essential service than a nice-to-have thing. European cities also came into being before the car did, so their layout is often more streetcar friendly: Higher density, no room for six lane highways, etc.
- astrodust 10y ago
  Tracks last anywhere from 30 to 40 years at most and then they need to be replaced. 30 years isn't long for any given line or right of way, but it's near end of life for tracks. In any city with a streetcar system these are constantly being replaced, bit by bit, to keep the system working.
  - jrapdx3 10y ago
    Certainly true here in Portland, OR. The oldest sections of the regional light rail system were constructed ca. 1980. There's a project starting next month to replace the track (along SW 1st Ave) which has caused many delays and considered a major hazard to reliability. Rail/streetcar public transportation is quite popular in the region and well-used, though it doesn't stop auto traffic from being a nightmare with increasing frequency. Edit: spelling.
- ucaetano 10y ago
  Tracks do last forever with normal maintenance and partial replacements. Rails do wear out, and are constantly being realigned and replaced, as well as ties, ballast, signaling etc. But your point about rolling stock is correct. The PCC street car was designed in the 30's to address that, being a mass-produced, modular system. Also, the European streetcar systems went through the same economic hardships (and some much larger ones - the wars), even using the same PCC cars, but still thrive to this day. So it is more about a policy driven by lobbying and intervention from auto manufacturers than purely business model and economics. Robert Moses had a really big hand in this as well...
  - Shivetya 10y ago
    street cars, falling under the light rail category, suffer a similar problem to heavy rail solutions. they are expensive to adapt to changes in usage. if the needs of the people change and the street car wasn't going that way you can't fix it quickly or cheaply.
    - ucaetano 10y ago
      Very true, that's why they can't be a single solution to transit problems. They are good for serving some areas, and work well when mixed with urban rail, suburban rail and buses. Use rail for high-density areas that change only over multiple decades, and buses for low density, mutable areas.
    - phil21 10y ago
      While this is a bug, it's also one of the most unnoticed and unspoken about features. If I'm looking for a house and access to reliable public transit is important to me, I'm going to want to buy in an area well served and expected to be well served 30 years from now as well. Track and train stations mean this is likely to be true. At least far more true than a bus route. In this manner city planners can't pull the social contract rug out from under you as easily.
- rmason 10y ago
  Detroit sold its streetcars in 1956 to Mexico City. Today some of those cars are still being run in various places in South America and in San Francisco!
jcoffland 10y ago
The big mistake was in assuming a public transport system could be profitable. Almost none are. Many of the best public transport systems in the world barely scrape by and are continually at risk of collapse. The benefits to businesses, improved mental health of passengers, reduction in pollution and traffic are all external benefits to the community which are not accounted for in the transportation systems budget. Some governments recognize this and so continue to subsidize their transportation systems. Countries like the US which demand that everything be run like a corporation will continue to fail to realize any benefit removed a step of two away from this quarter's profits.
- Shivetya 10y ago
  Well they would most all be in better off shape if they did not waste their resources on heavy rail. About the only need for such is to airports, past stadiums, and possibly central commercial districts. However their cost per mile to install, maintain, and operate, all wreck budgets. Worse many bus routes get co-opted to serve rail nodes which worsens the bus experience and not really help the rail. The key reasons buses are better is that they can go where people need to go and are not locked in to where they are built out at. The sad part is that in many parts of the world ridership doesn't increase much with the cost going down, even to free. hopefully autonomous fuel cell / battery cars and buses will make point to point more manageable and viable overall.
  - Nullabillity 10y ago
    Rail is much more reliable then buses since it doesn't compete with car congestion, plus you can make it run much more frequently, both of which are very important for adoption.
    - ajmurmann 10y ago
      Totally agree. Unless you do it like SF with its T line and have intersections that serve both train and car and give the car precedence ...
    - coryrc 10y ago
neves 10y ago
I've just (re)watched with my sons the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?". SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In the end, the detective said the villain must be a cartoon, because just a cartoon would have the stupid idea of replacing the efficient and cheap L.A. public transport system, and to build highways.
cornchips 10y ago
lol.. missed a link? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
bkeroack 10y ago
The loss of the Pacific Electric system was tragic. LA is currently spending many billions to re-build what was lost, but we're doing a good job so far: - The Expo light rail line is scheduled to open 5/20. This is the first rail line to go from downtown to the ocean since Pacific Electric. - The Purple line (HRT)--formerly the "subway to the sea" until budget cuts caused it to be trucated to West LA--is the first east/west fully-underground subway to go from downtown to the west side. - Metro's R2 plan[1] will invest $120B to construct new rail lines such as the Sepulveda Pass tunnel (bypass the infamous 405 freeway), West Hollywood light rail (one of the most walkable, transit-friendly areas in greater LA), direct rail access to LAX and more. It's an exciting time to be an Angeleno. I have no doubt that--if these projects aren't cancelled--it will be transformational for our city. 1. http://thesource.metro.net/2016/03/18/metros-bold-plan-to-transform-transportation/ http://thesource.metro.net/2016/03/18/metros-bold-plan-to-tr...
joshuaheard 10y ago
Modern urban planners can take a lesson from this. People abandoned light rail in Los Angeles because they preferred their cars. A car provides anytime, anywhere, personal door-to-door transportation versus the fixed-time, fixed-place, mass transit system that only takes you part way like fixed rail. Light rail will die a similar death in U.S. cities, especially when self-driving cars decrease traffic by a significant amount in the near future.
- bluthru 10y ago
  Cars don't scale. People get around in high density cities without cars just fine. It saves money and it's better for the environment, too.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    And, yet, most high density cities also have a huge amount of automobile traffic in addition to whatever public transportation they have. (Although, depending upon the city, a significant portion of that auto traffic is cabs--in part because of the expense/difficulty of parking.)
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- thrownaway2424 10y ago
  That's only true if your origin and destination are both surrounded by parking which makes them places not worth visiting. The thing about trams is they enable a full urban environment of places people actually want to be.
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  - rhino369 10y ago
Sniffnoy 10y ago
One factor that this article doesn't mention is that many streetcar companies were locked into contracts that prevented them from raising fares above 5¢. National City Lines didn't come in until well after problems had already started. (Pulling that from here: http://www.vox.com/2015/5/7/8562007/streetcar-history-demise http://www.vox.com/2015/5/7/8562007/streetcar-history-demise )
- SilasX 10y ago
  Was it physically easy to raise prices by a penny? IIRC, there was an account of an issue with Coca-Cola's vending machines and them not wanting to raise prices and finding all kinds of convoluted workarounds, including asking the treasury to issue a 7.5 cent coin.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    There are Coke signs attached to buildings that to this day advertise 5 cent cola.
galaxyLogic 10y ago
Recently Paul Krugman in NY Times made an insightful point I think: The most efficient transportation system in the world, is the ELEVATOR. So just build taller buildings in a small area like Manhattan, there is plenty of space up there, it is cheaper that way and no need for roads and automobiles to move from one floor to another. Living in a city is more humanistic anyway because there are more humans around you. There is no reason not to grow food in the sky-scrapers too. The only reason it is not done more is the zoning laws, which should be changed.
- sbov 10y ago
  Is there really no reason not to grow foods - is this a researched opinion of yours or just conjecture? The last article posted on HN about the trend of rendering skyscraper designs with greenery noted many of the problems with actually building them (irrigation, water proofing, the ability to support the extra weight of the soil/plants, sunlight/shadows, high winds, etc), I would imagine the problem being even greater if you had to grow edible foods rather than just a green plant.
  - galaxyLogic 10y ago
    Well yes I may be wrong on that, maybe its best to grow the greens outside Manhattan. It is a technical issue which should be explored if it seems economically feasible. But surely it's a good idea to grow something on the roof which grows there, I read it also helps insulate the building requiring less AC.
- potatolicious 10y ago
  We tried this - most urban centers in America are designed around elevators (and little else), and they've largely been failures that have been defined by blight, decay, and crime. "Just build tall buildings" is a necessary but insufficient condition for an effective city. Manhattan works not just because it builds up (in fact many parts of it are limited to 6-story buildings) but because it has mastered the complexities of creating livable, workable spaces. The other downtowns across America saw Manhattan, and took only "build tall buildings" away as a lesson, and they are for the most part deserted, ill-occupied spaces. Simple density and height is not the most important factor - it's not even among the top-10. "Manhattanization" became a dirty word across the country not because Manhattan is bad, but because so many places copied it thoughtlessly and incompetently. A study of what makes New York City tick that examines Midtown over long-standing neighborhoods like Greenwich Village, the Upper West Side, and even more outlying ones like Harlem and Washington Heights, is doomed to fail, because you're seeing a complex, functional city and the only lesson you're seemingly taking away is "density = good", despite nearly every other urban center in the US being evidence otherwise. tl;dr: Density is a necessary component of a functional city, but you don't need Midtown Manhattan-level density, and having density is not enough. High-density failed urban spaces are a dime a dozen. [edit] Side note: elevators aren't actually very efficient at high density. They are great for low-mid buildings because they add a lot of floor area and don't occupy much space themselves. For very tall skyscrapers it inverts - the number of elevators needed to properly serve the building starts increasing dramatically, eating up valuable floor space. There is a level at which you lose overall floor space for each floor you add to the building. Some of the supertall skyscrapers currently in existence/being built are in fact taller than they economically should be - and this is subsidized by pride, ego, government, rich benefactors, or some combination of the above. Tall skyscrapers make all kinds of optimizations to minimize this - destination-based elevators (where you punch in your destination before getting in) are popular, as are express elevators segmenting certain floors, but all of these grant modest gains in elevator capacity at best, and in modern times skyscraper heights are limited not by materials or architectural engineering but by this function of elevators vs. floor space.

One thing that the article doesn't mention but was still an important factor in the streetcars' demise: the need to replace the capital stock. Things like tracks and trains don't last forever, and eventually you have to replace them completely rather than just doing normal maintenance, but that only happens every few decades. If you spread out the replacement, it's not so bad, but I suspect many streetcar companies didn't bother doing that through the 20s since they were still relatively new (and 30 years counts as "relatively new" for tracks). But then the Depression hit and funds became hard to come by, followed by WWII which led to a surge in ridership but a shortage of materials. By the end of the war, not only were streetcars facing increasing competition from cars driving on new highways, the systems were also physically worn out and needed to be totally replaced. Indeed, this is exactly what happened to the Pacific Electric's Long Beach line, just with a gap of 29 years between closing the old line and opening the shiny new one in exactly the same place.

busterarm 10y ago
I prefer the theory that (I think) was proposed in The Illuminatus! Trilogy. Streetcars were too fun, so they had to go.
flexie 10y ago
Today you have streetcars ("trams") in more than 200 European cities and they have also needed replacements and been upgraded from time to time. So why did streetcars thrive in most of Europe, but barely survived in America? We had depressions and world wars in Europe too.
- Agustus 10y ago
  Space and gas taxes. Europeans do not have significant amounts of space to build housing supplies, that's why space/m^2 is much higher than here in the states, witness San Fancisco's trolley system that caused suburbanization (or at least enabled it). Gas Taxes in Europe are double than here in the states[1], US gas is taxed at relatively low rates when compared to other nations. Used as a user tax here in the states, its predominant purpose is to fund roadway improvements and maintenance; however, it is used to fund transit and other items. In Europe, the higher gas tax is used to drive (good one Agustus) less travel and subsidize rail lines. The trams / streetcars in Europe work because the suburbanization was stopped by high government taxes and forces the populous to pay more for a lower comparable standard of living. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fuel_tax_in_OECD_countries,_2010..png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fuel_tax_in_OECD_countrie... *Edited for why, if you disagree, please provide an alternative opinion. I have taken the time to provide a discourse, if a downvote to it is necessary, then please provide a reason.
  - Gmo 10y ago
    I did not downvote you but I found your post was reasonable (although I don't completely agree with it) until your last sentence and the "lower comparable standard of living". My guess is where the downvoting come from :)
  - Retric 10y ago
    Suburbanization was heavily subsidized in the US for a variety of political reasons. That just happened to line politically connected peoples pockets. It's actually terrible from an economic standpoint. The US also focuses on extremely local school funding which promotes heavy economic segregation and is extremely harmful for the overall economy. PS: Early on post WWII it was assumed to be a good defense from the at the time low yield nuclear weapons. But, this is hard to trace back and might not have had significant impact.
- f_allwein 10y ago
  It wasn't that straightforward in Europe either. E.g. in Munich, the tram network was reduced until the 1990s as it was thought underground trains could replace it. That turned out to be insufficient, so now we have both. But yes, it involves significant public spending.
- Theodores 10y ago
  Well, parent could be correct. Just yesterday there was a post on here about London's bus numbers, those had been inherited from the horse and cart days, been used on horse drawn trams, been used on electric trams, been used on trolleybuses (trams with little rubber wheels instead of proper steel ones) and now used on regular bus routes. Seems that London upgraded transport stock to get rid of trams without there being some huge conspiracy. A plausible scenario could happen elsewhere.
  - aninhumer 10y ago
    >trolleybuses (trams with little rubber wheels instead of proper steel ones) This seems like a peculiar way to describe them? A trolleybus is just a bus with normal rubber tires, that's powered electrically by a caternary.
  - Symbiote 10y ago
    In case you've never used one, a trolleybus is actually much closer to a normal bus, but runs from overhead electric wires. They're still used in some cities in China and eastern Europe. They're quiet, have flexible routes, and zero pollution in the City, and are lightweight.
    - dalke 10y ago
      And San Francisco. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybuses_in_San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybuses_in_San_Francisco says there are 5 such systems in the US, and that SF's is the second largest in the Western Hemisphere, after Mexico City's.
- busterarm 10y ago
  Streetcar companies in the US almost universally were under regulation where they were legally required to have a fare that could not support the maintenance of the system.
- anexprogrammer 10y ago
  Trams completely died out in the UK through the 60s. Just one town, Blackpool, kept them. This was around the time Beeching was making devastating cuts to the UK rail network. The belief seemed to be that cars would be the answer to everything making rail and trams go the same way as canals. Until only a few years ago the trams in Blackpool were running on rolling stock mainly from the 30s and 40s, with just a few bus-bodies from the 90s. They ended up being a living museum and they even bought up old trams from other regions. A few years ago they rebuilt the entire network with new modern stock and track, with new disabled friendly stops. It's sort-of a success. They halved the number of stops (due to needing platforms for disabled access), so it's less convenient. They increased the prices, making it more expensive than the bus following the same route. Many other UK cities have brought back modern tram networks, with mostly great success. It's often proved horribly expensive to do - Edinburgh being the example of how not to buy a tramway. The UK is also bringing back some of the axed rail networks as roads become increasingly gridlocked. Of course this is expensive to do, especially as sections of many lines have now been built on. Other parts of Europe, though not all, seem to make consistently more intelligent transport choices, and have long provided more integrated transport solutions.
- crzwdjk 10y ago
  That has more to do with what happened after the war: America was doing quite well and had piles of money to spend on roads and cars and suburban houses, while most of Europe was pretty devastated and had to spend everything just on rebuilding, without much left over for things like cars and highways, and so focused their investments on public transport. Even so, a huge number of European cities did end up abandoning their streetcar systems, either because the city was small enough that buses were deemed adequate or because it was big enough to have a metro system. The other big exception to the general trend was the Communist countries where public transport was encouraged over private automobiles for a range of reasons. But even in many of the ex-USSR countries, there has been a similar trend of streetcar infrastructure wearing out and getting abandoned rather than replaced.
  - anexprogrammer 10y ago
    UK was a financial wreck at the end of the war, yet still fully committed to internal combustion. We did irreparable damage to the rail network, abolished all tram networks except one, and built huge car-centered networks (spaghetti junction in Birmingham being the most people unfriendly example I know of, especially the residential streets in the shadow of the raised roadways). All it took was a look across the sea to the Netherlands we'd see integrated bus/rail/tram terminals and some degree of planning and intelligence still being applied to transport. We got to sit breathing traffic fumes. That makes me think it was more about politics and policies than money.
  - andys627 10y ago
    Do you have some good sources off the top of your head for this stuff? Thanks.
- gumby 10y ago
  The primary answer is buried in the article, in passing: "And when even 10% of Los Angeles’ population got behind the wheel, their presence so slowed the streetcars, which lacked their own lanes, that they could no longer make their schedules, and their level of service declined overall." European streetcars typically have separated lanes and loading areas and thus don't mix with automobile traffic. That way they aren't in conflict. When roads had largely low speed and uncontrolled use, streetcars worked fine because people were used to and able to stay out of each others' way. The automobile was dramatically faster and more dangerous, and the laws and infrastructure were gradually adapted to it (e.g. traffic signals, left hand turn rules etc). Streetcars in the US, and I suspect in other places where they have failed, had to intermix with automobiles, which lead them into a deadly spiral. The other factors mentioned in the article (reluctance to spend, reluctance to run a centralized system, regulation, etc etc) applied in Europe too -- we have a survivorship bias when we see the streetcars in Europe. Look at Berlin as a great A/B experiment: in the west the streetcars were torn up while in the east they were retained. I much prefer living in the east (today!! not under communism) because the Straßenbahn is so convenient. My kid took it to school. Some streetcars survive or have been revived in the US -- it's called "light rail" because I suppose "streetcar" is a laden word. They pretty much all have dedicated right of ways, and if not (I'm thinking of parts of San Francisco's MUNI) they have dedicated loading areas and exclusion zones -- except for cable cars :-)
  - aomurphy 10y ago
    Yes, and not only that, American streetcars had often gotten rights to build track from the city in return for responsibility to repair the streets the tracks were on. Which was a fine deal when there was only foot and horse traffic, but put them in an untenable situation when suddenly cars (which cause much more wear and tear on streets then people or horses) became popular.
- astrodust 10y ago
  Europe also got bombed to pieces, major cities had to be rebuilt anyway, and Eastern Europe didn't have the wealth that post WWII-America did, so trams were more an essential service than a nice-to-have thing. European cities also came into being before the car did, so their layout is often more streetcar friendly: Higher density, no room for six lane highways, etc.
astrodust 10y ago
Tracks last anywhere from 30 to 40 years at most and then they need to be replaced. 30 years isn't long for any given line or right of way, but it's near end of life for tracks. In any city with a streetcar system these are constantly being replaced, bit by bit, to keep the system working.
- jrapdx3 10y ago
  Certainly true here in Portland, OR. The oldest sections of the regional light rail system were constructed ca. 1980. There's a project starting next month to replace the track (along SW 1st Ave) which has caused many delays and considered a major hazard to reliability. Rail/streetcar public transportation is quite popular in the region and well-used, though it doesn't stop auto traffic from being a nightmare with increasing frequency. Edit: spelling.
ucaetano 10y ago
Tracks do last forever with normal maintenance and partial replacements. Rails do wear out, and are constantly being realigned and replaced, as well as ties, ballast, signaling etc. But your point about rolling stock is correct. The PCC street car was designed in the 30's to address that, being a mass-produced, modular system. Also, the European streetcar systems went through the same economic hardships (and some much larger ones - the wars), even using the same PCC cars, but still thrive to this day. So it is more about a policy driven by lobbying and intervention from auto manufacturers than purely business model and economics. Robert Moses had a really big hand in this as well...
- Shivetya 10y ago
  street cars, falling under the light rail category, suffer a similar problem to heavy rail solutions. they are expensive to adapt to changes in usage. if the needs of the people change and the street car wasn't going that way you can't fix it quickly or cheaply.
  - ucaetano 10y ago
    Very true, that's why they can't be a single solution to transit problems. They are good for serving some areas, and work well when mixed with urban rail, suburban rail and buses. Use rail for high-density areas that change only over multiple decades, and buses for low density, mutable areas.
  - phil21 10y ago
    While this is a bug, it's also one of the most unnoticed and unspoken about features. If I'm looking for a house and access to reliable public transit is important to me, I'm going to want to buy in an area well served and expected to be well served 30 years from now as well. Track and train stations mean this is likely to be true. At least far more true than a bus route. In this manner city planners can't pull the social contract rug out from under you as easily.
rmason 10y ago
Detroit sold its streetcars in 1956 to Mexico City. Today some of those cars are still being run in various places in South America and in San Francisco!

jcoffland 10y ago

The big mistake was in assuming a public transport system could be profitable. Almost none are. Many of the best public transport systems in the world barely scrape by and are continually at risk of collapse. The benefits to businesses, improved mental health of passengers, reduction in pollution and traffic are all external benefits to the community which are not accounted for in the transportation systems budget. Some governments recognize this and so continue to subsidize their transportation systems. Countries like the US which demand that everything be run like a corporation will continue to fail to realize any benefit removed a step of two away from this quarter's profits.

Shivetya 10y ago
Well they would most all be in better off shape if they did not waste their resources on heavy rail. About the only need for such is to airports, past stadiums, and possibly central commercial districts. However their cost per mile to install, maintain, and operate, all wreck budgets. Worse many bus routes get co-opted to serve rail nodes which worsens the bus experience and not really help the rail. The key reasons buses are better is that they can go where people need to go and are not locked in to where they are built out at. The sad part is that in many parts of the world ridership doesn't increase much with the cost going down, even to free. hopefully autonomous fuel cell / battery cars and buses will make point to point more manageable and viable overall.
- Nullabillity 10y ago
  Rail is much more reliable then buses since it doesn't compete with car congestion, plus you can make it run much more frequently, both of which are very important for adoption.
  - ajmurmann 10y ago
    Totally agree. Unless you do it like SF with its T line and have intersections that serve both train and car and give the car precedence ...
  - coryrc 10y ago

neves 10y ago

I've just (re)watched with my sons the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?". SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In the end, the detective said the villain must be a cartoon, because just a cartoon would have the stupid idea of replacing the efficient and cheap L.A. public transport system, and to build highways.

cornchips 10y ago

lol.. missed a link? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...

bkeroack 10y ago

The loss of the Pacific Electric system was tragic. LA is currently spending many billions to re-build what was lost, but we're doing a good job so far: - The Expo light rail line is scheduled to open 5/20. This is the first rail line to go from downtown to the ocean since Pacific Electric. - The Purple line (HRT)--formerly the "subway to the sea" until budget cuts caused it to be trucated to West LA--is the first east/west fully-underground subway to go from downtown to the west side. - Metro's R2 plan[1] will invest $120B to construct new rail lines such as the Sepulveda Pass tunnel (bypass the infamous 405 freeway), West Hollywood light rail (one of the most walkable, transit-friendly areas in greater LA), direct rail access to LAX and more. It's an exciting time to be an Angeleno. I have no doubt that--if these projects aren't cancelled--it will be transformational for our city. 1. http://thesource.metro.net/2016/03/18/metros-bold-plan-to-transform-transportation/ http://thesource.metro.net/2016/03/18/metros-bold-plan-to-tr...

joshuaheard 10y ago

Modern urban planners can take a lesson from this. People abandoned light rail in Los Angeles because they preferred their cars. A car provides anytime, anywhere, personal door-to-door transportation versus the fixed-time, fixed-place, mass transit system that only takes you part way like fixed rail. Light rail will die a similar death in U.S. cities, especially when self-driving cars decrease traffic by a significant amount in the near future.

bluthru 10y ago
Cars don't scale. People get around in high density cities without cars just fine. It saves money and it's better for the environment, too.
- ghaff 10y ago
  And, yet, most high density cities also have a huge amount of automobile traffic in addition to whatever public transportation they have. (Although, depending upon the city, a significant portion of that auto traffic is cabs--in part because of the expense/difficulty of parking.)
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thrownaway2424 10y ago
That's only true if your origin and destination are both surrounded by parking which makes them places not worth visiting. The thing about trams is they enable a full urban environment of places people actually want to be.
- deleted 10y ago
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- rhino369 10y ago

Sniffnoy 10y ago

One factor that this article doesn't mention is that many streetcar companies were locked into contracts that prevented them from raising fares above 5¢. National City Lines didn't come in until well after problems had already started. (Pulling that from here: http://www.vox.com/2015/5/7/8562007/streetcar-history-demise http://www.vox.com/2015/5/7/8562007/streetcar-history-demise )

SilasX 10y ago
Was it physically easy to raise prices by a penny? IIRC, there was an account of an issue with Coca-Cola's vending machines and them not wanting to raise prices and finding all kinds of convoluted workarounds, including asking the treasury to issue a 7.5 cent coin.
- astrodust 10y ago
  There are Coke signs attached to buildings that to this day advertise 5 cent cola.

galaxyLogic 10y ago

Recently Paul Krugman in NY Times made an insightful point I think: The most efficient transportation system in the world, is the ELEVATOR. So just build taller buildings in a small area like Manhattan, there is plenty of space up there, it is cheaper that way and no need for roads and automobiles to move from one floor to another. Living in a city is more humanistic anyway because there are more humans around you. There is no reason not to grow food in the sky-scrapers too. The only reason it is not done more is the zoning laws, which should be changed.

sbov 10y ago
Is there really no reason not to grow foods - is this a researched opinion of yours or just conjecture? The last article posted on HN about the trend of rendering skyscraper designs with greenery noted many of the problems with actually building them (irrigation, water proofing, the ability to support the extra weight of the soil/plants, sunlight/shadows, high winds, etc), I would imagine the problem being even greater if you had to grow edible foods rather than just a green plant.
- galaxyLogic 10y ago
  Well yes I may be wrong on that, maybe its best to grow the greens outside Manhattan. It is a technical issue which should be explored if it seems economically feasible. But surely it's a good idea to grow something on the roof which grows there, I read it also helps insulate the building requiring less AC.
potatolicious 10y ago
We tried this - most urban centers in America are designed around elevators (and little else), and they've largely been failures that have been defined by blight, decay, and crime. "Just build tall buildings" is a necessary but insufficient condition for an effective city. Manhattan works not just because it builds up (in fact many parts of it are limited to 6-story buildings) but because it has mastered the complexities of creating livable, workable spaces. The other downtowns across America saw Manhattan, and took only "build tall buildings" away as a lesson, and they are for the most part deserted, ill-occupied spaces. Simple density and height is not the most important factor - it's not even among the top-10. "Manhattanization" became a dirty word across the country not because Manhattan is bad, but because so many places copied it thoughtlessly and incompetently. A study of what makes New York City tick that examines Midtown over long-standing neighborhoods like Greenwich Village, the Upper West Side, and even more outlying ones like Harlem and Washington Heights, is doomed to fail, because you're seeing a complex, functional city and the only lesson you're seemingly taking away is "density = good", despite nearly every other urban center in the US being evidence otherwise. tl;dr: Density is a necessary component of a functional city, but you don't need Midtown Manhattan-level density, and having density is not enough. High-density failed urban spaces are a dime a dozen. [edit] Side note: elevators aren't actually very efficient at high density. They are great for low-mid buildings because they add a lot of floor area and don't occupy much space themselves. For very tall skyscrapers it inverts - the number of elevators needed to properly serve the building starts increasing dramatically, eating up valuable floor space. There is a level at which you lose overall floor space for each floor you add to the building. Some of the supertall skyscrapers currently in existence/being built are in fact taller than they economically should be - and this is subsidized by pride, ego, government, rich benefactors, or some combination of the above. Tall skyscrapers make all kinds of optimizations to minimize this - destination-based elevators (where you punch in your destination before getting in) are popular, as are express elevators segmenting certain floors, but all of these grant modest gains in elevator capacity at best, and in modern times skyscraper heights are limited not by materials or architectural engineering but by this function of elevators vs. floor space.