The first documented proposal for a subway in Los Angeles was in 1911. Bion J. Arnold drafted a report which was printed as a supplement to The California Outlook: A Progressive Weekly in its November 4, 1911 edition. Arnold was a pioneer in electrical engineering and an urban mass transportation expert who helped design New York’s Interborough Rapid Transit subway system.
The report noted that over two-thirds of downtown Los Angeles’ population growth had occurred in the previous ten years. It also points out that “the automobile truck is being developed rapidly and it is not unreasonable to expect that a large part of the tonnage between the harbor and local delivery and collection points will be handled by means of the auto-truck” and proposes a plan for “auto-highways.”
This 1911 plan never came to fruition.
On May 3, 1924, Pacific Electric Railway Company held a groundbreaking ceremony at First Street and Glendale Boulevard for Los Angeles’ first true subway — a 5,025 foot tunnel from Glendale and Beverly Boulevards to 4th and Hill Streets downtown.
Additional information on the tunneling project can be found in the September 6, 1924 issue of Electric Railway Journal.
The first train entered the tunnel on November 29, 1925, with a ginger-ale christening for opening day the following day (This was during Prohibition).
On June 19, 1955, the Pacific Electric tunnel closed after nearly thirty years of service.
In 1961, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority proposed the “Backbone Route,” a 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 was scrapped).
The City of Beverly Hills Director of Public Works stated in a Los Angeles Times article that if rail were to come through Beverly Hills, it needed to be underground. The proposed Backbone Route would run from El Monte through downtown Los Angeles and Beverly Hills to then-new Century City.
In 1968, Southern California Rapid Transit District (SCRTD) submitted a “Final Report to the people of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area regarding a first-stage system of Rapid Transit.” The 128-page Final Report proposed a comprehensive rapid transit system, including subway portions. It also put forth plans for rail to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), a downtown “Metroport” providing express service to LAX, and various other ambitious proposals.
The 1968 plan justified its ambitious goals by noting that more than two-thirds of the entire population of Los Angeles County lived within ten minutes travel time of the recommended routes, and that 42% of the estimated 1980 total employment in Los Angeles County would be employed within one mile of the Rapid Transit System.
On October 30, 1974, SCRTD released a proposal for A Possible Alternative Rapid Transit Plan (In The Event That Proposition “A” Does Not Pass). It noted that:
There are 169 miles of existing and former railroad rights-of-way available, and if five sections (totaling 1~ miles) of subway are constructed, an effective 183 mile rapid transit system can be developed using all corridors recommended in the Corridor Study, except the lines along Wilshire and across Hollywood. Rapid Transit along the Wilshire Corridor is essential in any event as the “Exposition” rail alignment…will not take its place.
It appears that in six years, rail rapid transit service can be established and completed between Van Nuys and Long Beach, via the [Central Business District], as an initial 42 mile route, financed with the 1/3 local share from Proposition 5 gasoline tax money and 2/3 from [Urban Mass Transit Administration — precursor to Federal Transit Administration].
The 1974 report also mentions that if Glendale and Burbank are willing to put up the difference in cost between aerial and cut-and-cover subway, in order to assure the presence of rapid transit through their communities, that certainly could be done. It also notes the cost differential for a subway station in Pasadena, as opposed to using an existing surface rail station.
On January 28, 1976, Los Angeles County Supervisor Baxter Ward presented his proposal for the “Sunset Coast Line,” a heavy rail transit system comprised of 89 miles of aerial structure and 94 miles of at-grade structure within freeway rights-of-way. It was to provide service to 43 cities in Los Angeles County.
It should be noted that the 1976 report’s subtitle is “Route of the New Red Cars.” The proposal was submitted only 15 years after Pacific Electric Railway’s “Red Cars” stopped passenger service on April 8, 1961 with the closure of its last rail line, between Los Angeles and Long Beach. The following day, rail service was replaced by buses.
On March 12, 1976, De Leuw, Cather & Company issues Evaluation of Sunset Coast Line Proposal Executive Summary for the proposed Sunset Coast Line Ltd. rapid transit system.
The evaluation comes after De Leuw & Cather leads a team of engineers to report back to the Southern California Rapid Transit District.
Among the reported findings are access problems for passengers, automobiles and buses should the stations be located within freeway rights-of-way, especially where guideway interchanges would be constructed at freeway interchanges.
Los Angeles County voters reject a ballot measure to increase sales tax by one half-cent to build the “Sunset Coast Line” on July 8, 1976.
More information can be found in the 1976 Evaluation of Sunset Coast Line Proposal Executive Summary full-text report prepared for the Southern California Rapid Transit District.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Baxter Ward later introduces a scaled back start-up project for the Sunset Coast Line, the “Sunset Coast Ltd.,” on April 12, 1978. This revised initiative also failed at the ballot box. Although unsuccessful, Ward’s work with the Urban Mass Transit Administration may have opened doors for Metro Rail in later years.
Just a few years later, SCRTD initiated plans for yet another rail rapid transit system. In June, 1983, the agency submitted its draft environmental impact statement / draft environmental impact (DEIS/DEIR) report for Los Angeles Rail Rapid Transit: Metro Rail (432p. PDF) to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Urban Mass Transportation Administration. The report’s abstract notes:
The proposed rail rapid transit project is an 18.6 mile subway including 16 to 18 stations. Known locally as the Metro Rail Project, it would run from Union Station through downtown, west along the Wilshire Corridor, and then north through the Fairfax community and West Hollywood. The line would proceed eastward to serve Hollywood and continue through the Cahuenga Pass to the San Fernando Valley, where station locations are proposed at Universal City and North Hollywood. A No Project Alternative, an 8.8 mile “Minimum Operable Segment,” and the proposed subway with a 2.6 mile aerial segment in the San Fernando Valley have also been defined and evaluated. The project traverses the Los Angeles Regional Core, the densest area of the Southern California metropolitan region. The project would provide much needed transit capacity and substantially reduce travel times through and within the Regional Core. The primary impact areas identified in this Draft EIS/EIR include transportation, land use, socio-economic, and historic resource preservation. Other impact areas include air quality, noise and vibration, energy, and construction activity impacts.
When completed, Los Angeles could finally realize a subway project through downtown, funded in part with federal dollars. Subway construction between downtown Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley would run from Union Station through downtown, west along the Wilshire Corridor, and then north through the Fairfax community and West Hollywood. The line would proceed eastward to serve Hollywood and continue through the Cahuenga Pass to the San Fernando Valley, with stations at Universal City and North Hollywood. It would be completed in “minimum operational segments.”
However, not everything went as planned.
On March 24, 1985, a pocket of underground methane gas exploded beneath a Ross Dress For Less store at 3rd Street and Fairfax Avenue, injuring twenty-three people.
According to this PBS article:
In the aftermath, it was clear that the paved and mostly impermeable surfaces of the modern city had trapped the explosive methane, allowing it to pool in dangerous quantities, but in the months and then years that followed, investigators could not agree on the gas’ origins The Ross Dress for Less sat atop the old Salt Lake Oil Field, and one theory suggested that gas had escaped from the depths by way of an improperly capped well. Another looked to a shallower source: the decay of organic matter in the underlying soil. Yet another pointed to the role of small faults opened up in historic times by hydraulic fracturing.
Beneath the Fairfax district lay not only methane pockets and ancient oil reservoirs, but also the proposed route of the Metro Rail subway. Plans approved in the early 1980s showed the rapid-transit line tunneling beneath Wilshire Boulevard between downtown and the Fairfax district, then turning north toward West Hollywood – a route that made sense as a transit corridor between major job and population centers, but which residents of surrounding neighborhoods bitterly opposed for a host of controversial reasons.
Their elected representatives, led by U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, seized on the explosion as another rationale against the project. Biblical imagery of a land on fire was all they needed to derail an already-controversial project. By the end of 1985, officials had re-rerouted the subway around from the Fairfax district and its methane fields. Instead, it would tunnel up Vermont Avenue toward Hollywood.
Three decades later, advances in boring machines and construction methods have (somewhat) quelled concerns about tunneling through a methane field — the Purple Line extension … straight down Wilshire — but the Ross Dress for Less explosion remains a powerful reminder of the natural forces hidden deep beneath the city’s pavement.
More information about the methane gas explosion can be found in the June 10, 1985 report titled: Task Force Report on the March 24, 1985 Methane Gas Explosion and Fire in Fairfax Area.
Congress later tied Metro Rail federal funding to a prohibition on tunneling through a mapped out “methane risk zone” according to the 99th U.S. Congress’ Public Law No. 99-190, December 19, 1985.
After years of planning, ground was broken for Los Angeles’ Metro Rail project on September 29, 1986 at the site of the future Civic Center station at First and Hill Streets.
If you ever wondered how excavation material is disposed of during subway construction, SCRTD’s Disposal of Tunnel and Station Excavation Material Technical Report provides a good explanation of the planning involved in hauling away material (or “muck”) from Metro Rail tunnel, station, and yard construction.
Construction oversight was passed from SCRTD to the LACTC’s Rail Construction Corporation in 1988. At this time, the project name changed from Metro Rail to the Metro Red Line, as part of an eight-point agreement between SCRTD and LACTC. The plan called for the Rail Construction Corporation to be created as a subsidiary that would consolidate the two rail construction programs — SCRTD’s Metro Rail subway project and the LACTC’s light rail projects — under a single entity with a separate governing board to ensure a well-coordinated rail program. The Rail Construction Corporation Board held its first meeting on January 11th, 1989 and continued to oversee rail construction projects until it was dissolved shortly after the 1993 merger of SCRTD and LACTC.
State Senator Alan Robbins (D-Van Nuys) had previously pushed for Metro Rail to reach the San Fernando Valley, but only as a subway.
By summer of 1988, this opposition to above-ground rail was dropped. According to the Los Angeles Times:
[https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-08-20-me-645-story.html]
Unable to generate homeowner support, the chief sponsor of legislation to ban construction of a ground-level or elevated light-rail system in San Fernando Valley residential neighborhoods said Friday he is dropping the plan.
State Sen. Alan Robbins…said that instead of pushing the legislation, he is asking business leaders to pledge to work for an extension of the downtown-to-North Hollywood Metro Rail subway westward across the Valley to Warner Center.
As originally proposed by Los Angeles County transit planners, a ground-level or elevated light-rail line would cross the Valley, connecting to Metro Rail in North Hollywood.
The “Wilshire” subway would now split at the Wilshire/Western Station, with one leg continuing west and the new Red Line alignment traveling north up the Vermont Avenue corridor to Hollywood and on to the San Fernando Valley.
On July 25, 1989, the project’s Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement / Final Subsequent Impact Report was released. The summary explains that:
The report addresses the impacts of the new locally preferred project alternative, described herein as a 17.3-mile subway with 16 stations, which runs from Union Station through downtown, west along Wilshire Boulevard to Vermont Avenue, where it branches into two lines. One branch proceeds west to a Wilshire/Western Station, and the other branch proceeds north along Vermont Avenue, west along Hollywood Boulevard, then north through the Santa Monica Mountains with a terminal point in North Hollywood. Revisions to· the previously approved alignment occur between the Wilshire/ Alvarado and the Universal City stations. The portion of the project from Union Station to Wilshire/Alvarado and from Universal City to North Hollywood remain essentially as proposed in the 1983 FEIS and FEIR.
The Metro Rail Final Supplemental EIS/EIR (493p. PDF) released July 25, 1989 notes in its cover letter:
This supplemental effort was undertaken to consider alternate alignments for the middle portion of the original 18.6 mile project. Revision to the previously approved alignment was necessary due to concerns about subsurface conditions in that portion of the alignment which passed through the Wilshire/Fairfax methane gas zone. This FSEIS/SEIR addresses the impacts of the new locally preferred alternative alignment for Metro Rail.
The new alignment was an all-subway route from Union Station through downtown and Hollywood, leaving the Wilshire Corridor subway terminating at Western Avenue.
The new LPA was a 17.3 mile, all subway alignment with sixteen stations, including the five-station, 4.4 mile, MOS-1 initial segment. The alignment was changed to proceed from Union Station through downtown and north along Vermont Avenue, west along Hollywood Boulevard, and then north to North Hollywood.
During 1990-1992, the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (LACTC) studied western extension alternatives for Metro Rail. At the time, this proposed alignment was called “the Orange Line.” The May, 1990 Los Angeles Metro Orange Line Extension Transitional Analysis, prepared for LACTC, mentions
The West Side Alignment alternatives included:
Wilshire Boulevard: a tunnel at the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue, proceeding west under Wilshire Boulevard with an aerial guideway in the median of Wilshire from Rossmore Avenue to La Jolla Avenue, then a tunnel along through Beverly Hills and Century City, terminating at Westwood Village
Pico Boulevard Short: A 9.4-mile alignment in a tunnel under Wilshire, southwest along Crenshaw Boulevard, west along Pico Boulevard, then northwest along San Vicente Boulevard back to Wilshire Boulevard, Century City, and Westwood Village
Santa Monica Boulevard: A tunnel alignment nearly 7.5 miles, beginning at Highland Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard, running southwest along Santa Monica Boulevard to Century City and Westwood Village
Pico Boulevard Long: From Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue, a tunnel turning southwest at Crenshaw Boulevard and continuing west along Pico Boulevard
Olympic Boulevard Short: A 9-mile tunnel alignment beginning at Western Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard, turning southwest to Olympic Boulevard before turning northwest along San Vicente Boulevard toward Century City and Westwood Village.
(Note: This project is completely unrelated to Metro’s Orange Line bus rapid transit corridor across the San Fernando Valley which opened on October 29, 2005 and was later renamed the G Line in 2020).
In 1992, LACTC released its Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Report for The Mid-City Segment from Wilshire/Western to Pico/San Vicente in the City of Los Angeles with Stations at Olympic/Crenshaw and Pico/San Vicente, which included the Pico/San Vicente alignment around this zone.
However, the merger of SCRTD and LACTC cloud the issue, along with the discovery of higher concentrations and flows of hydrogen sulfide gas than previously measured during the August, 1992 Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement / Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Report process.
Just as its predecessors had, the newly formed Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LA Metro) continued to encounter tunneling challenges.
It was comprised of tunneling engineers led by world renown Dr. Dan Eisenstein. That team began examining the geotechnical reports and the tunneling technology that SCRTD had originally adopted.
The Technical Appendix to the Eisenstein Panel Report was submitted to the LACMTA Board of Directors on December 4, 1995.’
However, challenges to subway construction continued. The Metro Rail subway construction under Hollywood Boulevard caused significant ground subsidence, sinkholes, cracked pavements, and building damage. The primary cause was attributed to the collapse-prone “young alluvium” sandy soil and leaking water mains, which saturated the ground above the tunnels.
In one incident, a burst water main caused a 70-foot-wide sinkhole to open, forcing a two-month halt to tunneling and the closure of local businesses.
A December 19, 1995 Los Angeles Times article states that:
“The broadcast raised no new issues for local viewers who have become accustomed to bad news from the MTA. But it weaved the history of cost overruns, ground sinkages and other problems at the agency into a damning portrait of bureaucratic ineptitude, suggesting that the subway has joined riots and earthquakes among the ranks of Southland disasters.”
A number of additional factors contributed to delays in Metro Rail Red Line subway construction: a Bus Riders Union lawsuit, the ensuing 1996 Consent Decree, a brain drain from multiple voluntary and directed layoffs, the disbandment of the Rail Construction Corporation Board of Directors in favor of a Metro Construction Committee, three different Metro CEOs between 1993 and 1997, several high-profile project cancelations (e.g. Pasadena extension, thirteen electric trolley bus lines), and Federal Transit Administration suspension of federal funding to Metro.
During the chaos, the Tunnel Advisory Panel kept working and made major changes and improvements to our tunneling methods, procedures and technology.
“Earth pressure balance” boring machines were developed as more advantageous over traditional tunneling machinery.
In 2005, Waxman worked with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to appoint a five-member peer review panel of independent tunneling experts to review a subway tunneling proposal using earth pressure balance technology.
In November, 2005, the panel reported that tunneling along Wilshire Boulevard and the operation of subway trains west of Western Avenue (where the project had been halted) could be done safely using new technology.
The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) Peer Review Panel’s final report detailed both general conclusions and detailed conclusions along with general recommendations, while also explaining the difference in boring technologies.
California Congressman Henry Waxman’s legislation (H.R.238 of the 110th Congress), cosponsored by Congressman Brad Sherman, passed by voice vote.
Los Angeles City Councilman Tom LaBonge put forth a motion to study continuing tunneling down Wilshire Boulevard and to seek overturning the federally defined Methane Risk Zone.