Category: Historic Map Collection
Movin’ On Up To Incomplete Streets: “Ultimate Traffic Relief” Through The 1946 Elevated Sidewalks Proposal For Los Angeles
How do you solve traffic congestion downtown? By removing pedestrians, of course! In our never-ending quest to collect, organize and provide access to Los Angeles’ historic traffic proposals, we have repeatedly run into some eye-popping proposals worthy of a double — or even triple-take. Prior to the publicly-governed era which began in 1958, numerous [...]
60 Years Ago This Week: Los Angeles Gets Its First Publicly-Governed Transportation Planning Agency
A few days ago, we marked an important milestone in Los Angeles’ transit and transportation history. The Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority (LAMTA) was formed as the city’s first publicly-run transit planning agency by the State of California on July 24, 1951. Sometimes referred to as “the first MTA,” it was empowered to formulate plans and policy for a [...]
50 Years Ago This Week: Planning The El Monte – Century City Backbone Route (Complete With Nuclear Fallout Shelters, Large-Capacity Helicopters And A Beverly Hills Subway)
In May of 1961, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority unveiled its plans for the Backbone Route – the 22.7-mile-long first leg of yet another rapid transit proposal for Los Angeles. After Wilshire Corridor stakeholders squelched the idea for a Los Angeles monorail system in their area in 1960, that proposal consisting of 74.9 mile plan for mostly overhead rail lines [...]
Future Stations Of The Past: Downtown’s 1968 “Metroport” & Express Service To LAX
After profiling past plans for both a subway and aerial station at Wilshire & La Brea earlier this month, we turn our attention to Los Angeles International Airport and efforts to transport passengers there from downtown more than 40 years ago. LAX currently ranks 6th among passenger airports in the world in terms of passenger traffic [...]
Future Stations Of The Past: 1980s Plans For A Wilshire / LaBrea Subway Stop & Overhead Metro Rail
This look back at plans for a Wilshire / La Brea Metro Rail station is the first in an occasional series focusing on ”future stations of the past.” We want to begin sharing images and plans for stations already built, under future consideration, or off the table due to alignment re-routing or changes in the planning process — as well [...]
Arroyo Seco Parkway At 70: The Unusual History Of The “Pasadena Freeway,” California Cycleway & Rare Traffic Plan Images
This Winter marks the 70th anniversary of the oldest freeway in the United States: The Arroyo Seco Parkway opened on December 30, 1940. Built during the Great Depression, construction of the parkway put a lot of people to work. At the time, it was considered an engineering marvel, reducing travel time between Los Angeles and Pasadena from [...]
50th Anniversary Of L.A.’s "Metro Rail"…Say Whaaat?!: Celebrating The 1960 Birth Of Our Modern Rail System
In July, Metro and Los Angeles celebrated 20 years of Metro Rail. To commemorate the anniversary last month, we took a look back at both the history of service between Los Angeles and Long Beach (1902-1961) as well as the launch of Metro Rail with Blue Line service in 1990 and its ongoing success as [...]
Demand-Based "Smart Parking": Watch How It Works
SFpark Overview from SFpark on Vimeo. You may have heard recent stories about San Francisco’s bold experiment with demand-based parking, a two-year pilot project that launched two weeks ago (see links to stories at end of this post). This new project collects and distributes real-time information about where parking is available so drivers can quickly [...]
1922 Los Angeles: Unprecedented Growth, Congestion And A Plan For Relief
We recently discovered a fascinating 1922 PhD. dissertation from University of California, Berkeley that is a treasure-trove of various maps and charts. J.M. Terrass wrote his Study and Plan of Relief of the Street Traffic Congestion in the City of Los Angeles, Calif. to complete his doctoral degree in Civil Engineering. The dissertation (105p. PDF) [...]
Lost Parkways Of Los Angeles: The 1946 Proposed Interregional, Regional And Metropolitan Plan
In the long history of transit planning in Los Angeles, early documents focused on relieving congestion with new street plans. Shortly after phenomenal growth in both area and population before World War II, various studies and reports outlined ambitious plans for moving people greater distances in a shorter amount of time. In 1946, the Interregional, [...]
