JANA SUMMERS The freeway system was first introduced to
Los Angeles to make getting around more efficient, but with today’s
heavy traffic, drivers may find themselves moving at a slower pace
than desired.
By Kelly Rayburn
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Each fall, UCLA students ride buses headed for football games at
the Rose Bowl, getting there by way of the oldest freeway in the
Western United States.
When completed in 1940, the Pasadena Freeway, originally called
the Arroyo Seco Parkway, represented efficiency and freedom. One
could jet through its tunnels and wind around its turns at
high-speeds while traffic continued to clog surface streets.
But Pasadena’s was only the first freeway in a region that
would come to be known for them. Today, as people associate New
York with its skyscrapers and San Francisco with the Golden Gate
Bridge, they identify Los Angeles by its freeways and cars.
“We’re a car culture here,” said UCLA policy
studies Professor Jorja Prover said. “You own your own car,
you are your own car, your car is part of your identity.”
 UCLA Archives Even in 1936, when this photo of Westwood
and Wilshire Boulevards was taken, cars filled the streets. While
many Angelenos engage in love affairs with their cars, students
often find themselves stuck in traffic after football games on this
freeway that was once so speedy and efficient. And many, like
Prover, wonder why the city does not have a better public
transportation system.
“Los Angeles does not have public transportation,”
said Prover, who used to work for the Metropolitan Transportation
Authority. “The MTA is a joke.”
She called attempts to establish better bus and rail
transportation “half-hearted” and
“perfunctory.”
But during the early 20th century, the city featured one of the
most extensive public transportation systems in the country ““
the “red car” lines.
In 1890, L.A. was a relatively small city of just over 50,000
people. But a new arrival to the region, Henry Huntington, a nephew
of railroad tycoon Collis Huntington, boasted of the city’s
big future.
According to historian Carey McWilliams in his book
“Southern California: An Island on the Land,”
Huntington once said: “I believe Los Angeles is destined to
be the most important city in the country, if not the world. It can
extend in any direction as far as you like.”
And with Huntington’s help, the city spread.
He founded the Los Angeles Railway, which competed fiercely with
other regional rail lines before he consolidated them into the
Pacific Electric Railway in 1901. During that year, all rail cars
were painted red.
By that time, interurban rail lines connecting L.A., Pasadena,
Hollywood, Santa Monica and San Bernardino already existed, and the
city grew outward with the rail lines.
In the 1920s, at its pinnacle, the Pacific Electric red car
system covered 1,100 miles of track in L.A., Orange, Ventura,
Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
But success for the rail lines was short-lived.
Auto ownership was low in the 1910s, but increased during the
’20s and ’30s, particularly in L.A., where the
city’s decentralized nature made automobile transportation
more convenient than walking or taking the transit.
And so a car culture began to emerge, even before construction
of the Pasadena Freeway started.
Even today, Angelenos want to drive cars because the city is so
sprawling, said UC Berkeley Professor of Transportation Studies
Martin Wachs.
“It’s not just a material or emotional
decision,” he said. “It’s really convenient to
own a car when destinations are so spread out. It’s a
rational decision.”
But in the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s, the
development of a car culture meant the end of red cars.
Many assume General Motors and other special interest groups
conspired with city officials in 1940 to end the red car lines, but
evidence is inconclusive, according to Wachs, and the number of
rail passengers had been decreasing before that time.
World War II brought a slight upswing in the number of people
riding the red cars, when gas was rationed, but people reverted
back to driving after the war.
Freeways expanded during the post-war era. In 1947, city
officials announced plans for the world’s first
“four-level grade separation” near downtown L.A., which
would connect the extended Pasadena Freeway with the 101 Hollywood
freeway.
Modern-day popular literature, such as Walter Mosely’s
noir Los Angeles mystery, “Devil in a Blue Dress,”
which takes place in 1948, describes how more people owned cars
after the war.
“The poorest man has a car in Los Angeles; he might not
have a roof over his head but he has a car,” Mosely
wrote.
In 1953, the four-level grade separation was complete. The city
retired the last red car eight years later.
Since then, L.A. has been deemed a freeway city. The freeways
themselves played roles in numerous movie sets, including “To
Live and Die in L.A.,” “Falling Down” and
“Speed.”
The region, says French sociologist Jean Baudrillard, is
unfriendly to pedestrians.
“If you get out of your car in this centrifugal
metropolis, you immediately become a delinquent; as soon as you
start walking, you are a threat to public order, like a dog
wandering in the road,” he wrote in a 1986 book called
“America.”
The region’s huge number of cars have caused air-quality
problems as well.
Though air-pollution conditions have improved in the last 30
years, smog still exacerbates or leads to health conditions, said
UCLA physiology Professor Chris Roberts.
“There is some evidence that exercise in a smoggy
environment may cause you to be more susceptible to
exercise-induced asthma, or may irritate someone who already has
that condition because there are more particulates in the
air,” he said.
Roberts added that carbon monoxide, present in cigarette smoke,
also exists in car exhaust. He said people at UCLA are less exposed
to smog than those living farther from the ocean.
Because of traffic and smog problems, many groups attempt to
lessen the number of cars traveling in L.A.
Besides establishing more bus routes and efforts to move people
via subway ““ which have not been nearly as successful as
attempts in the San Francisco Bay area, New York City and Boston
““ some programs provide incentives for people to carpool.
For 25 years, an organization called Southern California
Rideshare boasts of helping commuters find alternatives to driving
alone in a car, including helping businesses and individuals set up
car and vanpool groups.
And while many complain about the lack of public transportation
in the greater L.A. area, UCLA, at least, is adequately serviced by
buses, said urban planning Professor Brian Taylor.
According to Taylor, 1,100 buses a day arrive at UCLA.
Even Prover, who calls herself an “internal
optimist,” has hope for the future of L.A.
transportation.
“If we make a real commitment, anything is
possible,” she said. “This city has brought together
some of the most innovative people ever. There’s no reason
why we can’t do it.”