Category: Primary Resources

Primary Resources

50 Years Ago Today: Passenger Projections & Financial Feasibility Report For An LAX Monorail Project

Whether considered for alignment following the Los Angeles River, or connecting the San Fernando Valley to Long Beach, Los Angeles’ historic monorail proposals each have their own fascinating story. Fifty years ago today, transportation consultant Arthur C. Jenkins submitted his Preliminary Report On A…

19 Streetcar Models From Los Angeles Railway: Rarely Seen 1940s Photography And Construction Specifications

Archives are anything but static warehouses of historic resources — the are dynamic, organic things. New items are added, while the collection is sometimes reorganized to maximize research potential. And sometimes, you come across something that may have been there all…

Hollywood Bowl Transit, Part II: So What Did Those People Mover & Elevated Moving Sidewalk Proposals Say?

Last week, we took a look at one of Los Angeles’ proposed “future stations of the past”: the history behind the never-realized plans for a Metro Red Line station at the Hollywood Bowl. As we noted, once the station idea…

Future Stations Of The Past: Whatever Happened To Early Plans For A Metro Rail Stop At The Hollywood Bowl?

After exploring the fate of transit stations previously planned for Wilshire & La Brea and a downtown “Metroport,” we now turn our attention to early designs for a Red Line station next to the Hollywood Bowl. With various aspects of…

From Fuel Taxes To Mileage-Based User Fees: Rationale, Technology & Transitional Issues

This week, the University of Minnesota’s Intelligent Transportation Systems Institute has released a final report which looks at the viability and implications of shifting from fuel taxes to mileage-based user fees. Two national commissions established by the U.S. Congress recommend…

6 Years, 2,000 Posts & 1 Million Emails Later: The Top 5 Reasons You Should Be Following The Los Angeles Transportation Headlines

  Our social media outreach consists of numerous online properties ranging from resource sharing to social networking, but five years ago, it all began with our Los Angeles Transportation Headlines Blog. In late 2005, taking a cue from the transportation…

How We Travel: A Sustainable National Program For Travel Data

The U.S. transportation system serves hundreds of millions of travelers and handles millions of tons of freight each day to help ensure the efficient movement of peopl eand goods in support of personal goals and domestic and international commerce. A…

A Closer Look At Failure To Act: The Economic Impact Of Current Investment Trends In Surface Transportation Infrastructure

The nation’s surface transportation infrastructure includes the critical highways, bridges, railroads, and transit systems that enable people and goods to access the markets, services, and inputs of production essential to America’s economic vitality. For many years, the nation’s surface  transportation…

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…

Streetcar In The Sea Update: More About The 1950s “Transit Reefs” Of Los Angeles

Back in May, we wrote about old Los Angeles Transit Lines streetcars being dumped off the coast of Redondo Beach to create artificial reefs. That post was inspired by photo essays in the New York Times and other publications published…