We've all romanticized the Pacific Electric Red Car system... whenever I drive over long-abandoned trolley lines (or the old, now endangered empty subway tunnel downtown) I can't help but get nostalgic for an age I'm way too young to have ever witnessed first hand. (Never mind the Red Cars were probably never as functional as we now believe.)
Talk of reviving the Red Cars, at least as a downtown tourist attraction, has picked up steam, the Los Angeles Times reports today:
More than 40 years after the last Pacific Electric Red Car clanged to a stop in Los Angeles, city leaders are weighing a proposal to resurrect the trolley system with a five-mile loop that would connect downtown landmarks from Chinatown to Staples Center.
The Los Angeles redevelopment board is expected today to approve a $100,000 study to determine the feasibility of building a system that would use replicas — and possibly even a few original trolleys — from the historic Pacific Electric Railway that ran from 1903 to 1961.
Mayor James K. Hahn and Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Los Angeles) are among city leaders backing the study who hope a trolley system can be built. As examples of systems using vintage trolleys, they cite those in San Jose, Portland, New Orleans, Tampa and Seattle. A $10-million, 1.5-mile Red Car line linking Port of Los Angeles tourist spots has been operating with some success for more than a year, having drawn 94,000 riders. The line uses three replica cars.
But the proposal faces a rough ride at a time when the Metropolitan Transportation Authority already has a long list of expensive transit projects that are struggling amid cutbacks in state and federal transit funding.
Replicas of the Red Cars already run down in San Pedro, stopping along the tourist attractions.
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