When a city wins the right to hold the Olympics, one of the oft cited advantages to the region is the catalytic effect upon the urban and transport projects of the host cities. However, with unparalleled access to documents and…
Millions around the globe begin to set their sights on London for the next few weeks, making this a great time to take a look back at Los Angeles’ experience with the Olympics. As one of the very few cities to…
The Metro Transportation Library & Archive reached another milestone over the weekend, surpassing more than 2,000,000 views of our Flickr photo-sharing website. This achievement comes less than 9 months since hitting the 1.5 million mark, and just 17 months after our…
This Sunday marks the 75th anniversary of the formal opening of the Golden Gate Bridge linking San Francisco to Marin County. The iconic span was at once the greatest over-water structure in the entire world, a profound achievement in engineering…
A look back through our archives provides no shortage of historic photos, documents and other resources telling the story of transportation planning and operation in Southern California. But sometimes, we come across something very special, though not necessarily related to the…
A century of auto-oriented culture and bad city planning has left most of the country with transit that is underfunded, ill maintained, and ill conceived. But as rising oil prices portend the end of the era of cheap energy, a remarkable…
Nearly half of Americans now own a smartphone, so it is understandable that a tidal wave of information is coming to them through handheld devices — up from just 35% nine months ago. In response to the growing need for…
“Call it ugly, call it beautiful, call it dysfunctional — but don’t call Los Angeles unplanned.” So begins a chapter titled “Challenging The Myth Of An Unplanned Los Angeles” in a new book out this week that you’ll definitely want…
This weekend, the local news will be filled with stories about the long-awaited opening of the Metro Expo Line Phase I running from downtown to La Cienega Boulevard. But another event this week in Los Angeles history is worth noting as…
There are an estimated 600,000,000 passenger cars in the world, and that number is increasing every day. So, too, is Earth’s supply of parking spaces. In some cities, parking lots cover more than one-third of the metropolitan footprint. It’s official:…
The third week of March, 1937 had been designated “National Transportation Week” and Los Angeles was ready to roll out its new streetcars. 10,000 cheering spectators celebrated the arrival of two Presidents’ Conference Committee (PCC) streetcars at City Hall. It…
