Today marks the end of our twenty year run of publishing Metro Library’s Los Angeles Transportation Headlines every work day.

As libraries go, Metro’s Transportation Research Library & Archive is a very special place. It is the largest transit-operator research library in the United States. But its own story is truly remarkable. In a city often regarded as “having no history,” it is extraordinary that Metro inherited the transit and transportation research collections of its predecessor agencies, dating back to the late 19th century.

Local transit was not operated by public agencies until 1958. But significant holdings of Pacific Electric Railways, Los Angeles Railway, and other organizations were passed down through the publicly-governed agencies from that point forward. This is truly surprising, given the complexity of regional transportation history in Los Angeles County.

If you have never explored our Los Angeles transit history family tree or Los Angeles transit interactive timeline, we invite you to explore those resources and consider how unlikely it was that all of our historical documents, reports, books, maps, photos, film, manuscripts and artifacts from myriad organizations all managed to end up together in one place.  And, by all means, we invite you to dive into our Primary Resources site and the resources it contains.

Our vast (and unique) print and digital assets have allowed us to serve users across the region and around the world. Los Angeles has a unique urban form, and the quintessential auto-centric city produces an endless supply of those seeking to understand its history, development, and future.

We have worked to support our agency and its employees, as well as students, academics, historians, journalists, authors, bloggers and, of course, transit advocates and transit enthusiasts.

I have often said that you cannot understand Los Angeles without studying the role of water, the film industry, and transportation. So, we play an outsize role in helping answer the question, “What, exactly, is L.A.?”

The Los Angeles Transportation Headlines have been a powerful tool in that effort. We began collecting and distributing a few news stories every day.

But that challenge grew over time, as countless new developments impacted the breadth and depth of news and information documenting the evolution. Metro expanded its mobility agenda via the Measure R and Measure M funding referendums. We conceived, planned, opened, and expanded numerous rail and bus lines. We purchased Union Station, launched bike share, prepared for high-speed rail and witnessed the dawn of autonomous micromobility. We were with our readers through a multi-year global pandemic, where the coverage shifted yet again to include new aspects of telecommuting, safety, and social justice.

Through it all, we have kept our readers top of mind, in hopes of creating a more knowledgeable workforce and shedding greater light on this very niche — yet highly interdisciplinary — subject scope.

As Los Angeles — the 14th largest city in the world — prepares to host the 2026 World Cup, 2027 Super Bowl, and the 2028 Summer Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, we will continue to provide information, but in a broader format beyond our Headlines.

We will find new ways to share professional expertise, value-added context, research tips, new resource alerts, and to celebrate our cooperation, collaboration and accomplishments with others.

We’ll be back, and we hope to see and continue to serve you then.

After careful consideration, we have decided to promote other news aggregation sites and to focus our efforts on teaching users how to better execute transportation research.  The end of our current fiscal year seems like a good time to say goodbye to our Los Angeles Transportation Headlines, and our final issue will go out on June 27th.

We launched our Headlines in 2005, when the internet, journalism, blogging, information sharing and public advocacy all looked very different than today.  So much has evolved since then.  Our effort to push coverage of local mobility issues to Metro’s planning department staff eventually grew a subscriber base of over 5,000 users across Metro’s workforce and beyond Southern California to other parts of the country and around the world.  We began with brief emails, then moved on to a blogging platform, RSS feeds, Google keyword alerts, and other tools before launching a full-scale digital newspaper over the past several years.

However, that endeavor has become unsustainable for several reasons. The sheer volume of resources to be consulted, analyzed and optimized for inclusion has grown exponentially.

We currently publish approximately 2,000 links to news stories each month, and have probably distributed more than 200,000 since we began — meaning we have probably “eyeballed” close to a million stories to consider for inclusion. Metro’s librarians have done this one by one, day after day, for two decades.

We now want to channel that dedication, perseverance, and commitment into a new communication product going forward.  We will maintain our subscribers database for now, and we hope to share more details toward the end of the month.

Where were you during the Northridge Earthquake? If you lived here in the 90s, the moment is probably seared into your brain, a gut-stopping collective inflection point wedged in between the acquittal of the police officers that beat Rodney King and the murder trial of OJ Simpson.  

There’s a good chance that you were asleep. The 6.7 quake happened at 4:31 in the morning on the tail end of a three-day holiday weekend. The actual shaking lasted only 20 seconds or so. But in moments, everything changed.    

Angelenos woke up to toppled shelves, collapsed roofs, fires, burst pipes, and gas leaks. Over 90 hospitals had to be evacuated. Thousands lost their water and power … that is, if they were lucky. 25,000 homes were destroyed. More than 1,800 people were injured. Over 60 people died.

The earthquake had also mangled LA’s transportation system, leaving four major freeways severely damaged: 

• I-5, the crucial north-south route connecting Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley with communities north of the San Gabriel Mountains. The Gavin Canyon Overpass split apart, cutting off a critical access point to Santa Clarita.  
• SR-14, or the Antelope Valley Freeway, which links Los Angeles with Santa Clarita, Palmdale, and Lancaster. An overpass collapsed onto the freeway at the Newhall Pass, which connected I-5 to SR-14 (This had also happened after the Sylmar earthquake.)  
• SR-118, the Simi Valley Freeway, which connects Los Angeles and Ventura counties. The freeway sustained serious damage at the Gothic Avenue and Bull Creek bridges, making it unusable. 
• I-10, the busiest freeway in the nation, which then carried 300,000+ people per day. It collapsed at the La Cienega Boulevard / Venice Boulevard and Washington Boulevard / Fairfax Ave bridges.

After the dust settled and the immediate aftershocks subsided, Angelenos had to ask themselves a huge, pressing question: How are we going to get around???  

––– 

Fear of the Big One has loomed over Los Angeles for a very long time. The Long Beach Earthquake of 1933 destroyed dozens of schools and killed 120 people. The Sylmar Earthquake of 1971 caused landslides, damaged hospitals, and toppled two major freeway interchanges. But the Northridge earthquake was the most destructive and costly. By a longshot. We had been lucky, some said, that the earthquake took place on a federal holiday. The following day, however, millions of people would have to get to work. 

With four major freeways suddenly missing in action, transit was cast in the spotlight. If people couldn’t move around, the economy would collapse. At the time, the Los Angeles Times claimed that the closure of the I-10 alone cost the local economy $1M a day.  

Buses, the most flexible components of the public transit system, were among the first responders. All but one of our bus lines ended up running the day of the quake. Within three days we shored up existing east-west routes (such as the 2, 4, 20-320, 439, and 454) to provide alternatives to the unusable I-10 and routed over 100 bus detours. We also launched five brand new bus lines –– the 634 (Westside Special), 640 (Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena), 641 (Burbank-Warner Center special Express), 642 (Burbank-East Pasadena Special Express, which was operated by Foothill Transit) and 644 (West Los Angeles Park and Ride, which we launched jointly with LADOT). This doesn’t include dozens of bus lines and detours managed by other municipal transportation agencies … 16 of them in all.

Another part of LA’s transportation infrastructure that wasn’t damaged? The rail lines! Metro Rail was still in its infancy –– the Blue Line was three years old, and the Red Line, then just a 1.8-mile segment from Union Station to MacArthur Park, hadn’t even turned one. Nevertheless, within a mere six hours of the quake, the Blue Line was running again, and the Red Line was running the next day. This was a big statement –– the very idea of building a subway in a seismically active zone had jangled cultural nerves (for Hollywood’s take, just watch Volcano (1997)). The earthquake proved that being underground was one of the safest places one could be. No trains were running when the shaking began (too early), but the reinforced oval tunnels held firm while the earth absorbed the shock. There actually were some workers in the tunnels that morning, building the Red Line extension to North Hollywood. But over 100 feet below sea level, they barely registered the shock.  

Of all the region’s transit agencies, Metrolink –– at that time a four-line commuter rail network that hadn’t yet hit its second birthday –– may have had the biggest cross to bear. Metrolink picked up the slack in the more remote and mountainous areas of Los Angeles County that didn’t have many alternative roads or detours –– in other words, the places where rail would become a lifeline. Within days, Metrolink had added extra cars to its Santa Clarita Valley Line (now known as the Antelope Valley Line), which then terminated in Santa Clarita. But the agency didn’t stop there. Helped by an emergency FEMA grant, Metrolink extended that rail line another 50 (!) miles using existing Southern Pacific freight tracks to reach stranded commuters in Palmdale and Lancaster. Metrolink also added emergency stops along its Moorpark Line (Now the Ventura County Line), extending it southwest to reach Camarillo.

In sum, despite the considerable traffic and apocalyptic headlines, transit showed itself to be resilient.  

When the earthquake struck, writers were quick to bring up transit as a glimmering silver lining. Perhaps the disaster would encourage people to discover transit’s benefits, and subsequently change their travel patterns. The writer and planner Sam Hall Kaplan, writing for the Los Angeles Times, wondered whether the quake could “wean us from building expensive, community-busting freeways and to make us use our surface routes more efficiently for a happy melding of public and private transportation.” The Los Angeles Times editorial board felt similarly. “If this experience gets enough people out of their autos and traveling to work by bus or rail, this quake may help put Los Angeles on its way to a more efficient, far less vulnerable 21st century transit system.”   

In reality, ridership gains were uneven. The Blue Line (now the A Line) actually saw ridership decline in the days following the disaster but bounced back to pre-quake levels by January 26. Meanwhile, Red Line (Now the B Line) ridership increased by 12.5%, thanks in part to the transfers at Union Station from the influx of new Metrolink riders.   

Metrolink’s ridership saw the most dramatic changes, jumping from about 6,000 daily boardings pre-quake to a record high of 31,376 in the week following the earthquake. Much of this was powered by the Santa Clarita Line, which saw its daily boardings leap from about 1000 to a high of 22,000 on January 25. This gradually tapered off –– by the end of June, Santa Clarita Line ridership had dropped to 4,000 boardings per day. Still, this was four times higher than before the quake.

After the earthquake, politicians and journalists prophesied that buses would be the “safety valves” for thousands of people affected by the freeway closures. This didn’t quite pan out. Bus ridership declined immediately following the quake but recovered to pre-quake levels after about a week. (Part of this had to do with the emergency school closures throughout the San Fernando Valley, which kept more people at home.) The east-west lines (as well as the emergency lines) saw modest increases in February and early March. But by and large, bus ridership didn’t hit the numbers that pundits expected. By the end of March, only two of our emergency bus lines were still running, one internal report explained, “due to less than anticipated increase in patronage.”  

—

Over the following months, the freeways were repaired.  

• February 20, a detour was completed on SR-118, so both the former westbound lanes could accommodate both directions of traffic. The freeway was completely repaired that September.  
• April 12, 1994, the I-10 reopened … two and a half months ahead of schedule. 
• May 17-18, the I-5 mainline opened at Gavin Canyon.  
• July 8, the Newhall Pass interchange partially reopened, restoring connections between the I-5 and SR-14. It was completed in 1995.   

As the freeways reopened, transit ridership dropped. In fact, the only transit line that retained riders over the long term was the Santa Clarita Line, albeit at a far lower level than its peak. Given the gusto with which Angelenos returned to driving, you have to wonder about the earthquake’s legacy for transit. Was it really a vote of confidence?  

I’d argue yes. Here’s why.  

First, it proved that transit is safe. Freeways buckled. Bridges collapsed. Rail lines, for the most part, emerged unscathed. And it left us with a lasting takeaway –– when you’re underground, swaying buildings and falling objects are non-issues. Even if many commuters eventually reverted to driving, the earthquake instilled confidence in our system.  

The earthquake got different agencies talking to one another. We already had committees in place to facilitate dialogue with other municipal bus agencies, and the earthquake prompted additional task forces to handle relief services and public outreach. This was felt among commuters too. Within days of the earthquake, we saw articles published full of tips and tricks for “quake-induced rookies” navigating the bus system for the first time. Many of us ultimately chose to drive instead, but the message was one of solidarity, that we were all in this together.  

It forced Angelenos to get scrappy, casting new ways of getting around into the spotlight. One local rideshare service saw calls jump from about sixfold in the days after the quake. And decades before the pandemic made remote work commonplace, the earthquake put telecommuting on the table (the governor even started an emergency telecommuting partnership that supplied information to businesses as well as equipment and software donated by 90s tech giants like IBM, Intel, and AT&T). While home interview surveys, conducted months after the earthquake, suggested that carpooling did not increase markedly, the earthquake fueled conversations about flexible work hours, and staggered commutes, and hybrid work. 

Last, the earthquake laid the groundwork for future transit improvements. I already mentioned the emergency extension of the Santa Clarita Line north to Palmdale and Lancaster. This was already in the works, but the earthquake expedited the project by 10 years! In 1994, we received a $19 million grant from the California Transportation Commission for building carpool lanes.

Yet more lastingly, I think, the earthquake is significant for the impact it didn’t have on transportation. In the reports that came out of the quake, officials reviewed the ridership data, looked in the mirror, and asked themselves the hard questions: Why were increases in bus ridership so much smaller than those on commuter trains? Why did bus service lose out whenever it competed with commuter rail? Why did so many people revert to driving? The answers laid the groundwork for future programs designed to make transit more attractive, such as employer-provided shuttles, green incentive programs, HOV and bus priority lanes.   

Today, on the 30-year anniversary of the quake, the shock has faded but the earthquake’s shadow is still on our minds. That’s why we have installed state-of-the-art early warning technology in all our bus and rail facilities that can give us up to 60 seconds notice before an earthquake. It’s why we have created an internal damage assessment team so we can proactively check the integrity of our buildings and tunnels without waiting for others to come to us. And it’s why we’ve developed emergency preparedness guides and stocked supplies to make sure our staff have everything they need in case they ever must report to work as disaster service workers. We’ll never know if or when the Big One is coming, but Northridge has taught us that the worst can be mitigated with innovation, teamwork, planning.

The native Angeleno also served on the Board of Directors of the Southern California Rapid Transit District from 1973 to 1984.

He was appointed to the Board by Mayor Tom Bradley. The Board was comprised of an appointee from each of the five County Board of Supervisors, two appointees of the mayor of Los Angeles, and four appointees of the City Selection Committee representing the other municipalities within Los Angeles County contained in the District.

In 1978, Takei was elected Vice-President of the Board.

George Takei was called away from the set of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1978 to cast the tie-breaking vote for the creation of Metro Rail, Los Angeles’ heavy rail transit system.

In 1980, Takei also served as one of fourteen members of the American Public Transit Association (APTA)’s Executive Committee as Vice-President for Human Resources.

In May, 1984, veteran SCRTD Board members Takei and Ruth E. Richter were replaced by attorney Carmen A. Estrada and public affairs director Norm Emerson.

Although his tenure on the Board ended in 1984, he remained a staunch advocate for public transit. He is featured in this 1984 promotion for the Milwaukee County Transit System.

In 1989, he helped SCRTD celebrate the launch of new methanol-powered buses (beginning at 2:20 mark).

Takei is an Angeleno through and through. He graduated Los Angeles High School in 1956, received his Bachelor of Arts in Theater Arts from UCLA in 1960, and his Master of Arts in Theater Arts from UCLA in 1964.

He has completed five 26.2-mile marathons (including the very first Los Angeles Marathon in 1985), and carried the Olympic Flame in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Torch Relay.

On October 30, 1986, Takei received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

He was surrounded by co-stars, fans, and SCRTD colleagues as he joked, “There it is, my good name for everyone to walk all over.”

Takei reflected on his role in bringing rail transit to Los Angeles in a 2008 interview with Metro Weekly. He explained:

I was an active advocate for building the subway. When we started construction, I thought, ”I’m a good public servant, but I also have to maintain a professional career.” I went to Mayor Bradley and said, ”An actor doesn’t have to be wildly popular, but he cannot afford to be hated. And if you’re blocking traffic or impacting retail areas with construction work….” I didn’t want to see [picket] lines in front of my home saying, ”You’ve ruined my business” or ”You’re destroying our neighborhood.” So I resigned after 11 years. And how right my antennae were, because there were all sorts of disasters during construction. There were no injuries, but there were incredible cost overruns.

He continued:

It’s vital to the mobility of our city. And people are now discovering, in fact, our urban planning is developing in concert with our subway system. We have new retail and condo and apartment projects going up at our subway stations. Hollywood and Vine is going to get a W Hotel. At Vermont and Wilshire, we have a major residential complex going up. That makes sense. You wake up in the morning, take your elevator ride straight down to the subway station, then take the subway downtown where all the offices and jobs are.

On September 30, 2014, Takei served as the Master of Ceremonies for the ground breaking of Metro’s Regional Connector Project. The complete history of the planning and construction of the project can be found here. An overview of the ground breaking ceremonies and speeches can be found here.

Takei returned to the Regional Connector project by again serving as Master of Ceremonies for its official opening on June 16, 2023.

This project makes it easier to ride across Los Angeles County as passengers can now travel between Azusa and Long Beach, and between East Los Angeles and Santa Monica, without transferring lines.

It improves connections, bringing together the Metro L (Gold), A (Blue), E (Expo), B (Red) and D (Purple) Lines at the 7th Street/Metro Center Station, and increases opportunities for jobs, education and essential services.

Early Historical Context

Mobility challenges in downtown Los Angeles are hardly new.

A Los Angeles Times columnist pointed out in 1937 that founding father Felipe de Neve should have led Los Angeles’ eleven first families six miles further west — near the La Brea Tar Pits — to prevent future downtown congestion, since the city center was “cramped on two sides by hills and on the third by a river.”

But we need to go back further to understand that downtown has long vexxed planners trying to move people under the center of Los Angeles.

On September 1, 1911, Southern Pacific created a new “Pacific Electric Railway Company” comprised of several constituent railroads with all electrical operations under a new name. This inter-urban rail network complimented Los Angeles Railway‘s more localized streetcar system that had been operating since 1895.

Just a few weeks after this 1911 “Great Merger,” a supplement in The California Outlook reported on “the transportation problem of Los Angeles,” including the need for a “union station” to consolidate the passenger and freight heavy rail traffic coming into downtown. It details the challenges arising from the city’s rapid growth, the impact of at-grade streetcars competing with explosive private automobile use (the number of cars quadrupled between 1914 and 1922), and even the potential for continued rapid urbanization once the Panama Canal project is completed.

This 1911 report is the earliest known proposal for subways in Los Angeles.

By the 1920s, congestion in downtown led to Pacific Electric planning, constructing, and operating the city’s first subway. The Pacific Electric tunnel opened on November 30, 1925 at the behest the California Railroad Commission’s order calling for a subway to allow passengers to bypass downtown’s congested streets altogether.

The tunnel reduced travel time by as much as 12 minutes when traveling from downtown to Glendale and Burbank. However, the advent of the freeways and the decline of streetcar system led to the subway being shuttered in 1955.

Just the year before, a 1954 study called for a network of express buses in subways. The Los Angeles Metropolitan Traffic Association put forth a proposal to build an underground road network for buses bringing commuters into downtown for work. This report is notable for its interesting, prescient, and downright stunning suggestions.

Perhaps most importantly, the plan called for entrances to downtown from the north, south, east and west. Sound familiar?

While many transit plans from the past were never realized, it is worth noting that this 1954 study proposed integration of existing and new transit projects — just as the 2023 Regional Connector does.

Project History

Like many transit projects, the Regional Connector’s history is complex.

We have synthesized numerous reports and other documents to chronicle the conception, planning, construction, and opening of the Regional Connector.

The Regional Connector was first known as the “Downtown Connector,” and later as “Regional Connector” from circa 2005 to the present.

Planning for a simplified alignment of rail projects through downtown can be traced to the 1983 draft environmental impact report (DEIR) for the Metro Blue Line between downtown Los Angeles and downtown Long Beach.

In the section discussing “Possible Future Extensions in Downtown Los Angeles,” it is noted that:

The extension of the Flower Street Subway (LA-2) in downtown Los Angeles from 7th and Flower Streets northerly to Union Station would be a considerably more complex construction process and could take up to 24 months longer to complete than the initial phase of LA-2.

Four additional underground stations and 1.7 miles of tunnel would be required. The stations and areas of minimal depth (less than 30 feet) would be constructed using cut-and-cover methods as described for the initial phase of LA-2; however, the majority of the tunnel operation could be conducted by using tunneling machines. Tunneling has less effect on surrounding areas than the cut-and-cover method since the street surface and utilities are not significantly disturbed and there is less dust, noise, and traffic disruption.

1992 Long Range Plan and 30 years of planning and construction

The “Blue Line Downtown Connector” was one of eight “Candidate Corridors” in the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission’s 30-Year Integrated Transportation Plan produced in 1992.

Several other long-planned projects from that 1992 list have also come to fruition, including the Expo Line and Gold Line into the San Gabriel Valley.

At a January, 1995 Long Range Plan workshop, the Metro Board directed staff to model five additional rail lines, including the Downtown Connector. They were still under consideration “in the second decade” of the Plan if additional funds were to become available.

Metro’s 2003 Short Range Transportation Plan notes the need to explore the feasibility of a Downtown Light Rail connector linking the Metro Gold Line, Metro Blue Line, and Metro Expo Line through downtown Los Angeles, “allowing uninterrupted service across a variety of rail lines.”

In early 2004, Metro staff initiated a technical feasibility assessment for a potential regional connector:

This study focused on conceptual methods to provide a regional connector and to alleviate potential operational constraints at the 7th Street/Metro Center Station. The study analyzed low to moderate cost alternatives including partial “at-grade” and “street running” alignments. Since the study was limited to how additional capacity could be attained and how a connection could be made, no specific alignment was recommended. Instead, multiple opportunities were reviewed, each with advantages and disadvantages. The study focused on sixteen conceptual options including combinations of at-grade, partial subsurface and partial aerial alignments. Based on Metro’s historic subway costs added to the lack of available funding for a new subway, a fully underground alignment was not considered as practical in the alternatives.

At the July, 2005 Board meeting, the Chair requested a report on the potential ridership benefits, costs and implementation timeframes of the Metro Light Rail Regional Connector.

No ridership estimates had been calculated, but a 1993 review of linking the Metro Expo and Blue Lines to the Metro Gold Line and it’s Eastside Extension concluded that connecting them would significantly increase utilization of all rail lines and improve regional mobility.

The Expo and Blue Lines were merely 1.5 miles from Gold Line, but all trips through downtown required transfers via the Metro Red Line connection Union Station to 7th/Metro Station on the otherside of downtown.

In 2005, planning was projected to take up to 24 months, development of bid documents and procurement for construction and award was projected to be another 12 months, and construction was slated for 38 to 60 months. This meant the project would take six to eight years to complete.

In September, 2005, the Metro Board directed CEO Roger Snoble to report back by November/December on the impact of the regional connector, what an implementation timeline would look like, and to identify possible sources of funding.

Two months later, staff reported back that they were modeling ridership and operational consequences of a regional connector. They identified a second potential system benefit in that a regional connector would alleviate an operational constraint at the 7th Street/Metro Center Station. They also noted the plan, design, and construction timeline to be seven to nine years if funding were provided (estimated at $120 million to $250 million).

Metro issued a request for proposals (RFP) on January 29, 2007, soliciting firms to perform an alternatives analysis of the proposed project linking the Metro Blue, Expo and Green Line networks with the Metro Gold Line serving Pasadena and East Los Angeles.

In June, 2007, the Metro Board authorized a contract award and budget amendment for Fiscal Year 2008 in compliance with the Federal Transit Administration’s New Starts requirements.

The Regional Connector’s Final Environmental Impact Statement/Report was ultimately approved by the Metro Board in April, 2012. The vote was unanimous, with one abstention.

The ground breaking ceremonies were held in Little Tokyo on September 30, 2014, with a planned opening for 2020. This event followed the groundbreaking for the Metro Crenshaw/LAX K Line eight months earlier.

At the time, the 1.9-mile underground light rail line was pegged at $1.42-billion dollars. It received funding from Measure R, the half-cent sales tax increase approved by nearly 68% of Los Angeles County voters in November, 2008.

During the ground breaking ceremony, U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx stated:

Transportation is about more than getting from one point to another — it’s about getting from where you are to a better life. Today’s milestone is one to celebrate, but we need to do more to deliver these projects more quickly and efficiently, and the one thousand combined federal, state and local permits to get the light rail from ground breaking to ribbon cutting is simply too much.

Metro’s June, 2022 Quarterly Project Status report for the Regional Connector states:

Passenger forecasts in 2035, as a result of the improved service, indicate 90,000 daily transit trips will occur through the 1.9-mile downtown trunk, including 17,000 new riders.

Several factors contributed to significant construction delays for completing the project. Complex and unexpected utility relocations were required, as preliminary studies did not identify a number of early history utility connections and 19th century infrastructure. The subterranean foundations for adjacent high-rise buildings also presented some unique engineering challenges.

The pandemic and train testing challenges also contributed to pushing the opening date to June 16, 2023.

Resources

Metro Regional Connector document files

Our earliest held Pacific Electric employee news magazine was published in November, 1918, the month that the four-year conflict ended. (Our collection of Los Angeles Railway employee news magazines does not begin until 1920).

It notes that 490 “Pacific Electric boys” went bravely forth to war, but that “the first golden stars have only just been added to our Service Flag” with the loss of two gallant soldiers, Joseph L. Rodman and Clyde Burgher.

Most of the November, 1918 issue recounts those serving overseas along with excerpts from their cards and letters. It appears that only two service members employed by Pacific Electric lost their lives in battle — both toward the very end of the war.

Back at home, Los Angeles was booming during the first decades of the 20th century. The population of the city and Los Angeles County as a whole both grew more than 5 times in size between 1900 and 1920.

But as World War I dragged on, transit agencies began looking to women to fill in for men for streetcar operation.

The idea was not a new one beyond Los Angeles. Several hundred women had already begun working as operators at the New York Railway and the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company.

The April 18, 1918 edition of the Los Angeles Times carried a front page story on the training of the city’s first known woman transit operator.

Jennie Shand had previously worked in the Los Angeles Railway offices, and later returned to its main switchboard through the 1920s. She is the earliest female streetcar operator that we know of to date, participating in Los Angeles Railway’s testing.

But that Los Angeles Times front page article documents some changing attitudes regarding women working jobs traditionally held by men.

It notes that:

“It would be no snap for women to work on street cars. No weaklings need apply. It’s a man’s job, and it’ll take the super-woman to make good…streetcar conductors cannot wear high heels, the tight belts and the draperies. It will take a supple woman with plenty of muscle to make good.”

On the flipside, George B. Anderson, chief of the Public Relations Department, notes in the same article that:

“The ‘conductress’ acquitted herself with credit in every test to which she was put and gave evidence that in some circumstances a woman may serve the public better than a man.”

This took place during a period of great advancement for women. The following year, women were granted the right to vote via passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on June 4, 1919 — later ratified on August 18, 1920.

Reflecting that progress, the Los Angeles Times article quotes an anonymous member of The Friday Morning Club in Los Angeles. She states:

“From the start, the presence of women in uniform on the street cars would be received with tremendous enthusiasm by progressive liberal-minded women…that women, being invited to participate in the actual operation of a great public utility, would rise to the responsibility and that practically all womankind would rejoice to know that their sex had finally been selected to render service of this character.”

 

We believe that by the time it was determined that women held the potential to successfully fill in for men serving overseas, the war ended and nearly all the deployed employees were heading home.

And we don’t know too much more about Jennie Shand, except that she must have loved to travel.

Other mentions in Two Bells, the Los Angeles Railway employee news magazine, discuss the upcoming automobile trip to British Columbia in 1924, with a planned stop at Yosemite Valley for the “former chief telephone operator of the main office switchboard.”

And in 1928, she was preparing for a four month tour of Europe, planning “to visit all of the cities of the Old World.”

We continue to search for information regarding Jennie Shand, other women transit operators who may have participated in this testing, and other “firsts” in Los Angeles transit and transportation history.

Other notable firsts in Los Angeles transit and transportation history:

Los Angeles transit’s first Black employee, William E. “Bill” Wells (1862-1943)

Los Angeles transit’s first African-American operator, Arcola Philpott (1944)

Pollution has been a problem that has challenged Los Angeles for over a century. Geographic features make smog prone to stay above the city and urban sprawl has created the demand for long-distance transit, most methods of which historically caused pollution.

Early efforts to reduce smog were primarily due to health concerns and trying to improve the appearance of the city. Inhaling smog was dangerous and residents thought it ruined the aesthetic of ‘Sunny California.’

More recently, planners have also been keen to reduce pollution due to the negative environmental impact it has and its contribution to climate change.

This article is not meant to be a complete definitive history of pollution in Southern California, but instead an investigation into some of the responses to pollution by LA Metro and its predecessor agencies, including the trial, adoption, and public relations campaigns of several alternative fuels.

The article aims to show the ways that bureaucracy, government, and technology respond to environmental concerns and why some alternative fuels never left the testing stage while others saw fleet-wide adoption.

Early Hybrid Fuel Pilot Projects

The earliest recorded tests for alternative fuel buses date back almost to the beginning of bus service in Los Angeles overall.

Pacific Electric Railways and Los Angeles Railway launched their joint venture for the first regularly scheduled bus service in Los Angeles on August 18, 1923, along Western Avenue. Service on Wilshire Boulevard began the following month and eight more routes soon followed.

By 1925, Los Angeles Railway was already experimenting with hybrid fuel prototypes, running “gasoline-electric” double-decker buses, made in California. (Coincidentally, they were colloquially known as “the green busses,” several decades before the term “green” was commonly used for environmentally-conscious endeavors).

These buses were deployed as auxiliary vehicles to streetcars. Their unique features included six-cylinder engines under the hood, but instead of being connected with a transmission, they were connected to a generator which developed electrical power for two motors — one on each of the rear wheels.

Another benefit to the new technology was smoother rides, in that gear shifting was not necessary for operation.

We continue to research the history of this project and why it was not more broadly adopted. One clue may be that the Los Angeles Times noted on November 29, 1925 that:

None of the bus lines are making a profit, and the Sunset Boulevard green busses and the Los Angeles Railway busses on Melrose Avenue are the only ones on which the revenue comes within speaking distance of the operating costs…[and] the immediate financial outlook is not particularly rosy.

The Pollution Problem

Los Angeles has had a smog problem almost as long as it has been a city, dating back to at least the turn of the century. However, this early pollution was blamed on factories and other heavy industries. Measures were taken in the first two decades of the 20th century and smog was mitigated temporarily.

Starting in the 1940s, the rise of the personal automobile dramatically increased air pollution. Smog became so severe that it started acting as a type of weather of its own, even affecting aviation.

Nevertheless, citizens believed that factories were still the primary cause of pollution, especially with the increased industrial output during World War II.

It was not until 1945 that experts began writing articles attempting to educate the public about the real causes of smog.

They tried to show how it was not just factories, but numerous sources including locomotives and automobiles that produced smog.

Moreover, they highlighted that the geography of the Los Angeles Basin meant that smog remained trapped by the mountains and with few winds to blow it away.

It was around this time that smog got its name as a portmanteau of ‘smoke’ and ‘fog.’

Throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, government officials began taking great efforts to begin cleaning up the smog problem.

They first tackled industrial pollution from factories and garbage burning.

Automobiles proved to be more difficult to regulate, especially as Los Angeles had begun to sprawl and many residents had long commutes to work making them wary of any changes to their cars, especially ones that could damage their engines.

‘Clean Diesel’

In the new political environment that was looking for any sources to blame for pollution, bus companies went on the defensive, especially with regard to their new diesel buses they had recently adopted in the 1940s to replace their older gasoline buses.

Diesel was a more energy-dense fuel than traditional gasoline, giving them better fuel economy. The bus companies attempted to prove to the public that their fleets were clean and not a contributor of smog.

An example of this can be seen in the August, 1951 issue of Pacific Electric Magazine which claimed that automobiles create more smog than buses, diverting blame from their fleet.

Similarly, the April, 1954 issue of Metro Coach News claimed that an independent laboratory had run tests that found GMC engines to be free of both air pollutants that cause smog as well as carbon monoxide.

These efforts continued into the 1960s with the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority (LAMTA) claiming in their June, 1963 employee news magazine that diesel engines contribute less to air pollution than comparable gasoline engines and that contributions of diesel MTA buses were a tiny fraction of total pollution in LA. 

General Motors even put out a video in 1967 that described the benefits and cleanliness of diesel engines.

Early Alternative Fuels Studies

The Southern California Rapid Transit District (SCRTD) replaced LAMTA bus service in 1964.

By the 1970s, SCRTD had begun investigating possible alternative fuels, including compressed natural gas (CNG), liquified natural gas (LNG), and liquified petroleum gas (LPG or petroleum).

They conducted a study to investigate whether these gaseous fuels could be used for automobiles, light trucks, and minibuses. 

CNG was tested on several buses in the early 1970s but SCRTD found that low mileage meant the fuel range was insufficient to be able to operate on CNG alone.

LNG was found to similarly lack mileage, negatively affecting its range, as well as being prone to explosions if proper precautions were not taken.

LPG was used by several of SCRTD’s predecessors in the decades prior, but also had the possibility of catching fire if proper mitigation measures were not taken.

However, for both LNG and LPG, the risks of explosions were almost zero.

While the alternative fuel study was optimistic that diesel engines would continue to decrease emissions in the future, it did find that gaseous fuels had lower emissions.

However, SCRTD had budgetary and availability constraints that made them impractical for wide-scale adoption at the time.

The study recommended that SCRTD stick with diesel for its automobiles and light trucks, but that minibuses operating downtown adopt LPG because the pedestrian-heavy area meant clean emissions were more valuable than fuel mileage.

While this study made no investigation into full-sized buses or rapid transit, it demonstrated the SCRTD’s focus on alternative fuels rather than trying to convince the public that diesel was clean energy.

SCRTD, and other transit agencies, would continue looking for alternative fuels. 

The California Steam Bus Project

In the early 1970s, several local and federal transit agencies experimented with external combustion engines (ECE) in a steam-powered buses.

The advantages of the ECE over traditional diesel engines are that they would produce fewer emissions, run quieter, and do not need to have gear shifts.

This was not the first time that steam engines had been used in the automotive industry.

They had briefly been used in cars in the early 1900s, but they lost popularity due to difficulty starting the engine and fears that they might explode.

Both of these problems had been solved by the 1970s and steam-powered buses were ready for a major test.

Dubbed “The California Steam Bus Project,” the California State Assembly greenlit a trial run of the conversion of three diesel buses into three different steam buses configurations using funds from the federal government.

Legislators and bureaucrats alike, at all levels of government, saw steam-powered buses as the clear solution to recent environmental regulations and the future of public transportation.

The guiding principle was that, while also powered by diesel, a steam engine can more thoroughly burn the fuel, leading to fewer emissions.

SCRTD joined transit agencies in San Francisco, Sacramento and San Diego in testing the feasibility of using external combustion engines, the most familiar of which is the steam engine — technically known as the Rankine cycle engine.

Steam-propelled road vehicles dated back to a French tractor in the 1760s, and steam buses debuted in London in 1919 and in Detroit and New York City in the 1920s.

Here at home, the California Legislature had been addressing motor vehicle air pollution since at least 1959.

It determined in 1967-68 that state and federal agencies’ findings regarding alternatives to the traditional internal combustion engine warranted further investigation regarding application to transit.

The State Assembly decided to sponsor a demonstration project which evaluated the technical feasibility and public acceptance of external-combustion engines as low-emission alternatives to contemporary city buses.

The project was funded by UMTA, the Urban Mass Transit Association (the predecessor to the Federal Transit Association), and was the first federally-funded demonstration project related to alternative-fuel transit buses.

In 1970, three different contractors began engineering systems for three different transit agencies in California.

William M. Brobeck & Associates of Berkeley was paired with nearby Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District (AC Transit) headquarted in Oakland, Lear Motors Corporation of Reno, NV was matched with San Francisco Municipal Railway (SF Muni), and Steam Power Systems of San Diego partnered with the Southern California Rapid Transit District in Los Angeles.

The California Assembly Office of Research provided overall direction to the three-agency project, assisted by two systems management firms.

They participated in two high profile demonstrations.

The Brobeck-AC Transit team effort was shown off to U.S. Department of Transportation officials, members of the U.S. Congress and guests in Washington D.C.

The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) even held a symposium in 1971. Representatives of the DOT, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, local leaders, and bus companies all attended and gave presentations about the advantages of the steam bus.

On April 26, 1972, all three steam buses were demonstrated before members of the California Legislature in Sacramento.

At the Steam Bus Symposium, William P. Lear, Chairman of the Board of Lear Motors Corporation, stated:

The present ICE [internal combustion engine] and diesel power plants have cost many billions and taken half a century to develop. In much less time, and for a great deal less money, steam can equal and exceed their performance and economy while eliminating pollution outputs. We consider our present results as encouraging but far from the ultimate in steam vehicle power plants for both cars and buses. The future is most promising; but, like all good things, will require more time and a lot more money than can be provided by one individual or a small corporation.

The California Steam Bus project initially seemed to be a success. It performed well in clean running, fuel economy, revenue service, and noise reduction.

The few categories where it did not outperform older diesel buses were attributed to the buses being adapted diesel buses, not even pre-production models.

The assumption was that they would improve with further revisions and refinements. Moreover, the steam bus was supported by the public who were growing increasingly concerned about the levels of smog and pollution.

The 1972 film Steambus explores the history of steam power and looks at the steam engine as a possible alternative to reduce traffic-induced air pollution.

It examines the California State Legislature’s federally-funded steam bus project, initiated in 1968, to develop a steam-powered bus.

Metro Transportation Research Library & Archive has preserved the only known copy of this film in existence, which can be viewed in two parts here:

Overall, the Steam Bus Project resulted in numerous findings regarding the use of Rankine cycle engines for public transit buses.

Acceleration, top speed and hill climbing were equal to or exceeded road performance of buses powered by six-cylinder diesel engines.

Tests conducted by the California Air Resources Board showed steam buses to be well below the 1975 California emission standards for heavy duty vehicles.

The California Highway Patrol reported that the quietest steam bus was 2.5 to 10 decibels below the quietest diesel buses in drive-by tests and 6 to 14 decibels below in curb-side tests, while interior sound levels were similar to or higher than diesels.

Conventional driver controls were used on the steam buses, minimizing special driver training.

And while these experimental vehicles also matched up well against diesel buses in the areas of revenue service (e.g. comfort, rider acceptance), they showed promise in their potential for further fuel consumption improvement and potential for emissions improvement.

In light of these glowing reviews regarding steam buses overall, what happened after the demonstration period was over?

Unfortunately, Los Angeles encountered more than its fair share of problems with the Steam Bus Project.

The California Steam Bus Project Final Report reports the Southern California Rapid Transit District experience as follows:

During the first week of public service, the SCRTD steam bus encountered numerous difficulties.

Its first two days of attempted public service on September 5 and 6 were aborted, because a bolt sheared on the combustor air fan assembly and a gear mechanism in the oil pump failed.

On September 7, the bus entered public service, but it completed only a one-way trip of 7.3 miles because a pulley slipped which prevented the fan from turning inside the boiler.

On September 8, the bus was withdrawn from public service when a boiler leak was detected; however, the bus traveled 86 miles on September 11 during performance testing until the boiler leak deteriorated.

After the bus was towed to San Diego and the repaired boiler was installed, the bus returned to Los Angeles on September 28 and re-entered public service on September 29, operating on Wilshire Boulevard.

It completed a successful 15-mile round trip with air conditioning operational and favorable performance, except for a loose battery terminal which caused a 27-minute delay.

The bus thereby completed its second and last day of public service because vendor and fleet operator contracts expired on September 30.

In 5.5 months since March, this bus logged 1,007 miles.

Ultimately, the Los Angeles Steam Bus from its San Diego-based manufacturer was in service for only two days, whereas the other test cities witnessed greater success.

Still, the California State Legislature’s Assembly Office of Research concluded that the Steam Bus Project successfully completed its goals.

Extensive surveys and measurements of community attitudes were conducted.

The steam propulsion systems were the first alternate power systems to be visibly supported by the public sector.

The participation of both public and private entities at an early date was viewed as very beneficial.

The Office went on to make several specific recommendations regarding the adoption of Rankine cycle engines.

It urged the exploration of an application for heavy duty vehicles in a research and development program including design engineering and bench testing rather than studies and demonstrations, including funding of at least $20 million over a four-year period.

Nevertheless, the steam bus failed to replace diesel buses. How did this happen if it performed so well during the tests?

The answer is illustrative of wider trends in the history of energy regimes and infrastructural changes. Put simply, there were too many hurdles and the advantages were not attractive enough to overcome them.

Large infrastructural systems, such as massive bus fleets, have inertia that make it difficult for them to change. Driving and maintenance differed slightly from diesel buses, meaning employee retraining would be necessary.

Moreover, once engineering problems were overcome, the steam bus was projected to cost slightly more than diesel buses as well as have worse fuel economy, making them more expensive to operate. 

To transit managers, these costs outweighed the benefits.

One aspect of the California Steam Bus Project was a survey sent out to transit managers across the country, both public and private bus fleets.

The results showed that almost all believed pollution to be a major problem but they also thought that buses were one of the smallest contributors to pollution, behind private automobiles, oil refineries, and factories.

As such, very few transit managers said they would be willing to pay a premium for a steam bus over a diesel one.

In addition, the steam bus was still years away before engineering would be perfected and they could start service. California needed more urgent solutions.

While not as clean as a steam bus, catalytic converters started becoming widespread in the mid-1970s to meet new environmental regulations.

These required no infrastructural changes and were not as costly as changing whole bus fleets to a new type of engine.

In the end, the steam bus failed not due to any fault of its own but because of the needs of transit managers and their perspective on pollution.

Enthusiasm for the steam bus was most likely influenced by global uncertainty about petroleum prices and the later OPEC embargo.

However, it was also emblematic of how those who make policy recommendations and those who directly run infrastructures have different priorities.

While planners look toward the future and see numerous benefits on paper, managers are more concerned with reliability and day-to-day operations.

This explains in part why the reports about the steam bus were so rosy but full fleets of them never came to fruition.

Moreover, investigators were optimistic that if the engine could be perfected for a steam bus, it could be employed in private automobiles as well, reducing emissions even further.

The California Steam Bus Project Final Report contains many more details about this pivotal moment in California’s alternative-fuel transit vehicle history, as do other reports in our online full-text access document collection.

The entire project was further reviewed in detail in a paper presented at the International Automotive Engineering Congress held in Detroit in 1973.

Response to OPEC Embargo

The DOT again launched an investigation into possible alternative fuels for buses in 1984.

Responding directly to the OPEC oil embargo of the previous decade, this study was not meant to replace diesel, only to offer possible alternative fuels to supplement diesel if prices were high or supplies were low during a national emergency.

They studied alcohols, vegetable oils, methane (natural gas), and hydrogen. In addition to investigating the efficacy of the different fuels, the report also analyzed if the current production of each fuel had the capacity to support bus fleets if need be.

The study found that only alcohol was a possibility for near-term implementation. The others would require redesigns of engines and fuel storage systems.

Moreover, it found that while all alternatives, except hydrogen (which required storage systems that would not be widespread for several decades), were possible alternatives, they should only be used if very necessary due to either high costs, limited supplies, or high pollution: 

“In summary, vegetable oils are the only fuel with immediate development potential; ethanol has near-term potential, while methanol has near-term potential of the end user point of view (i.e., transit systems) but only long-term potential from the production point of view; methane is a long-term potential fuel, while hydrogen is a post-20th century potential bus fuel.”

Compressed Natural Gas (CNG)

In the 1990s and early 2000s, LA Metro became increasingly concerned about the harmful role that pollution played in climate change. No longer was mitigating pollution an attempt to curb smog, but it was now a critical goal to save the planet.

In 1993, Metro directors decided to only order clean vehicles in the future. After alcohol-based fuels, methanol and ethanol were too corrosive to engines, they opted for compressed natural gas (CNG). While marginally more expensive per bus, ~10-15% more, they reduced emissions by 80%.

This raises the question: why did the CNG bus succeed when the steam bus failed?

It was clearly not due to cost. In addition to being slightly more expensive, CNG buses also required the construction of brand-new custom refueling stations.

Instead, the answer has to do with how governments, bureaucracies, and technologies interact.

Part of the reason is that CNG is all domestically produced in America. Diesel, as seen during the OPEC embargo, was dependent on foreign markets and fluctuated with international politics.

The steam bus, despite its innovations and reduced emissions, was still powered by diesel. Furthermore, its low fuel economy meant it required even more gas than traditional diesel engines.

Another difference between the steam bus and the CNG bus is the timing of when they were proposed. In the 1970s, new solutions were still being proposed and weighed against each other.

It was only a few years after the California Steam Bus Project that catalytic converters became widespread. 

Another factor is that LA Metro was trying to set itself apart from the SCRTD.

It had only formed earlier that year in 1993 from a merger of SCRTD and Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (LACTC).

Taking a drastic step, such as committing to a fully CNG bus fleet, would help it differentiate itself from its predecessor and show the public that it was a leader in innovation.

However, it is impossible to narrow down only one or a handful of reasons why CNG succeeded and the steam bus. The economy, environment, politics, and science all interact with each other in complex unseen ways.

Electric Buses

More recently, LA Metro has begun using electric buses. In 2017 the board of LA Metro adopted a motion to move to a 100% zero-emissions fleet by 2030.

They were now driven more by concerns for climate change than public health. The first electric bus entered service in July 2020.

By October 2021, the Metro G (Orange) Line was the first line to completely transition to all-electric vehicles.

Over the next decade, Metro will continue to replace its approximately 2,300 CNG buses, reducing its carbon footprint and becoming carbon neutral.

Conclusion

The history of alternative fuel adoption in transit characterizes the complicated relationship between technology and government.

It is not always the ‘best’ technology that is adopted, assuming that a ‘best’ technology can even be agreed upon.

A tradeoff exists between emissions, costs, upkeep, and many other variables.

Furthermore, politics and timing play a critical role in which technologies are widely adopted and which ones are not.

Transit agencies do not exist in a vacuum and must respond to factors outside their control.

Nevertheless, LA Metro has continuously strived to reduce emissions and meet the ever-evolving needs of the public, as demonstrated by the ongoing transition to electric buses. 

Laura was born in Iowa but migrated west with her mother, first to Nebraska and later to Los Angeles in 1895. She again taught music at 6th and Hill, but by 1901, she took a job at a florist who shared quarters with a tourist information bureau.

In 1907, she was selected president of the Pacific Coast Travel club and commenced her career making and selling maps.

During this time she studied all manner of railroad and engineering maps, including Pacific Electric Railway, Los Angeles Railway and Los Angeles Motor Coach Company, and put together six plates of an official map of the city while working out of her office in the Los Angeles Times building.

Her maps reveal not just pre-freeway Los Angeles, or long gone neighborhood names like “Tropico”, but also her own love of L.A.’s extensive transit system and rail infrastructure.

Unfortunately, all of the originals were destroyed in the infamous bombing of the Los Angeles Times building on October 1, 1910, forcing her to rebuild from scratch, while defending against pirated copies of her maps.

Her highly detailed and prized maps are held by museums, the Library of Congress, and our own Metro Transportation Research Library and Archive.

Metro is fortunate to have one of her final maps in its collection of art and history, a large 1927 Los Angeles transit map. It can be seen on the 15^th floor just outside the Transportation Library and Archive’s front doors.

It was gifted to our predecessor, the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1993) by the City of Los Angeles to commemorate the opening of the A (Blue) Line in 1990.

Much more info on Laura L Whitlock and her map making career can be found in this Huntington Library online exhibit from 2019 and this Los Angeles Magazine article.

The agency encouraged countywide transit policies among all the transit service providers: for example, Southern California Rapid Transit District, Santa Monica Big Blue Bus, Culver City Bus, Torrance Transit, Montebello Bus Lines, Foothill Transit, Santa Clarita Transit, and others.

When universal fares were “first launched” is a difficult question.

On January 7, 1963, local business and political leaders gathered at the Statler-Hilton Hotel downtown to hear a presentation on the need for a rapid transit system in Los Angeles.

One of the presentations that day was a speech by C.M. Gilliss, Executive Director of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority. He outlined the plan for a rapid transit system for Los Angeles, and buried in that statement is his prescient vision for what is known today as “smart card technology.”

A half-century before TAP, Gilliss spoke of a typical passenger on the new system:

He shows his individually coded credit card to the magic-eye fare computer, is admitted through the turnstile concourse and is taken by escalator quickly to the train platform. A computer-tabulating device will automatically record his entrance and his exit and he will be billed automatically for his total mileage at the end of the month.

So what happened to this vision? We documented the history of this 1963 proposal as part of a mass rapid transit plan here.

It took a long time for the vision of a universal fare system for LA to catch up to the technology that would make it happen, and then the implementation itself was a long complex project. 

In terms of contemporary ventures into universal fare media, the first — as in very first — would be the test group of UCLA students in September, 2006.

It was a multi-year implementation that grew by various categories of transit users.

March 15, 2009 is the key “no more paper monthly passes” operational date for smart cards systemwide.

Prior to TAP becoming the standard countywide, there was debate about moving to a universal fare system sooner by using magnetic stripe technology. Santa Monica Big Blue Bus had implemented magnetic stripe based passes, as did New York MTA, Mexico City Metro, other transit agencies using mag-stripe technology for years.

Smart card technology was right around the corner. Metro and our municipal operator partners decided to go with “what’s next” instead of what was old, and that would be standardizing fare collection with smart cards.

The Metro Board of Directors had adopted TAP as the standard. In August 2001, the Board adopted smart card technology as the regional integrating technology for Transit Access Pass (TAP) program, formerly known as the Universal Fare System (UFS).

TAP would be the regional automated electronic fare collection project, which had spanned a decade in development with a goal of creating a multi-modal, multi-operator fare system providing seamless travel for customers.

In March, 2004, the Metro Board of Directors approved the TAP clearinghouse and TAP service center.  A whole new fare system for Metro and the municipal operators also had to be procured and installed – approximately 3,600 buses between Metro’s fleet and the Muni operator fleets, along with ticket vending machines (TVMs) at all the rail and bus stations/terminals.

Metro then decided to add an additional complex technology project on top of that — fare gates.

Fareboxes were roughly the same for the previous 100 years prior to going to a digital/electronic fare collection system.  The implementation was far more complex than anything that came before it.

Fun fact – In 2006, the world’s first paper smart cards are tested out by visitors to the Winter Olympic Games in Turin, Italy.

By February, 2007, TAP began replacing paper passes (as Metro monthly pass counterfeiters everywhere shed a tear or two)

The October 18, 2007 Metro Board of Directors’ Executive Management & Audit Committee and Operations Committee received an update on Metro’s equipment contract with Cubic for universal fare media:

“Installation of the Universal Fare System (UFS) equipment on Metro’s bus and rail fleet was completed in May 2006 to allow limited use and testing of new TAP smart card capabilities on bus fare boxes and rail ticket vending machines. Working with Communication’s staff responsible for college and vocational school pass programs, the TAP team introduced an Institutional Pass (I-TAP) a controlled segment of UCLA students, faculty and employees to participate in a “pilot” program over 12 months ago.

The December 4, 2008 minutes of the Metro Board of Directors’ Operations Committee outline plans for the Transit Access Pass (TAP) and Metro’s rail fare gates.

This December 15, 2008 Metro Press Release and December 16, 2008 MyMetro employee news digest article outline the many benefits of using TAP, as Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa TAPs into the 21st Century with new, reusable transit fare cards.

TAP cards officially replaced day passes on March 15, 2009. This March 10, 2009 MyMetro employee news article outlines the campaign to inform riders, which included outreach in several languages. Presentations were made in Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Russian, Armenian, Japanese and English, along with translators accompanying speakers to some locations.

This March 9, 2009 Metro Press Release provides additional information.

Metro deployed creative social media marketing, outreach, and user education about TAP via the agency’s YouTube channel.

A timeline for all of the complex activities for TAP implementation can be found in this February 17, 2010 Metro Board of Directors’ Operations Committee report.

An update on policy revisions associated with fare gate locking can be found in this May 17, 2012 Metro Board of Directors’ Executive Management Committee report.

By December, 2013, fare gates being latched becomes the standard as TAP is further implemented.

The B (Red) Line has always been the busiest line in our transit network. On an average weekday, the B Line has about 75,000 boardings.

Together with the D (Purple) Line, which shares some of the same track, the B Line has seen more than 400 million boardings over the past decade.

The B Line is one of many subways around the world that are ubiquitous. Nobody bats an eye.

Before the first 4.4-mile segment of the Red Line debuted in 1993 between Union Station and MacArthur Park, the idea of underground rail in Los Angeles most definitely raised eyebrows.

After all, Angelenos had never had a modern subway before. Would the new system be safe? Would it hold up in an earthquake? Would it be fast and compelling enough to lure Angelenos from their cars?

The leaders of Metro’s predecessors, the Southern California Rapid Transit District (SCRTD) and the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (LACTC), were determined to assuage the public’s concerns. They put out informational videos, like the one below, demonstrating how the new system would work for millions of would-be riders. Safety from natural disasters was a top priority, and the engineers had planned for everything. Seismically-reinforced tunnels, fire-resistant vehicles, emergency sprinklers. You name it. The Red Line could weather an apocalypse.

Yet even if the new subway’s engineering was state-of-the-art, the L.A. region was a driving city. The streetcars were long gone, the Blue Line was in its infancy. You had to give people good reasons to get them out of their cars.

To drum up excitement for the new subway, SCRTD initiated a public art element, officials dedicated .05% of the capital project budget for public artworks in each station.

This was considered a huge sum at the time. Each station was envisioned as an underground gallery that channeled a unique sense of place (such as Stephen Antonakos’ 12 neon sculptures that paid homage to the first neon-illuminated building in Pershing Square, or Roberto Gil de Montes’s allegorical triptych describing the descent underground at the 7th Street/Metro Center Station).

Art was also regarded as a social salve that could discourage litter and vandalism. “If we can get people to better respect these stations,” one commissioner remarked, “the money for public art will be well spent.”

None of this should make you believe that building the Red Line was easy. It took 6.5 years to complete the first segment, which cost $330 million per mile.

But for many Angelenos, it was worth the wait. More than 52,800 people rode on the first day. Over 91,000 people rode it on the second day. By April 1, 1993, the Red Line had welcomed its millionth passenger. The lucky rider was honored with $100 worth of tokens (this was pre-TAP) and a gift certificate to Langer’s Deli, which had seen pastrami sales triple thanks to its proximity to the MacArthur Park/Westlake Station.

Equally important, the Red Line inspired awe among its first riders.

“For now, the novelty of the Red Line seems to have created a jovial atmosphere,” the Los Angeles Times reported in February 1993, nearly a month after it opened.

Unlike the New York City subway, where people were accustomed to avoiding eye contact, Angeleno riders “are still intrigued enough by their new surroundings that they have yet to develop the surly exterior of commuters whose only concern is to get quickly from here to there.”

This sense of awe extended to the trains themselves. When the Red Line debuted, keeping the sleek Italian-made subway cars clean and pristine was all-important. If riders didn’t feel comfortable descending into the stations, LA’s bet on rail would be worthless.

So, Metro invested in an ambitious cleaning campaign, preparing for the worst. Despite their concerns, however, there was little to clean, especially during those first months. Two instances of graffiti. Some gum. Some stains and candy wrappers. Angelenos seemed to take pride in their brand new ride.

So here we are, 30 years later. The Red Line is now officially known as the B Line  and continues beyond MacArthur Park; by the year 2000 it had been extended all the way to North Hollywood.

There have certainly been new challenges — the COVID-19 pandemic, the increase in our region’s unhoused population. We’re working to make our entire system feel safer and more comfortable for everyone.

Still, we can’t overstate the Red Line’s significance to our mission. The Red Line introduced a new mode of transportation to a city designed for driving. It was a proof of concept that local rail can work in Los Angeles in spite of claims that it couldn’t be done.

It was a critical step toward the brighter, fairer, and cleaner future that inspires everything we do.