What would LA be like now if they'd kept the streetcar system?

[lvoc]

Originally Posted by Carlite

Yeah, we were all going to be traveling around in flying cars by now, according to the futurists in 1960. Americans really want to have technofixes for social problems, so we won't have to change the way we live. It's not going to work, it's just going to make the adjustments that much shorter and harder when we do have to make them. We're heading for a future of $10 a gallon gas, that's rationed, if we don't change the way the system works.

Actually hydrocarbon supplies are up sharply and demand is dropping. Ain't that a bi tch.

I have been flying since the 60s. I am aware of no credible projections that the air was ever suitable to the general public. Maybe if we get the drivers automated it might work...but not otherwise.

I wish practical solutions. Not feel good ones. The west has developed in a way that makes urban transit unworkable. It is a life ring we throw to the poor not reality.

And I think the really damning thing is that it just does not work in situations where there is not very high density.

And I think that operating a car automatically is fully within the power of existing technology and really has been since the first airliner made a blind landing. The question is when will it be cost effective. I would think even now it could well be cost effective to automate the driving of trucks on long interstate stretches. And buses could be along soon after...it would really be nice to do Las Vegas to Los Angeles in three and a half hours...without having to go through air port security or live through the boredom of that drive.

[Carlite]

Los Angeles developed around a network of streetcars and interurban trolleys--the Los Angeles Railway and Pacific Electric. Pacific Electric went as far south as Newport Beach, as far east as San Bernardino, as far west as Santa Monica, northeast to Pasadena and the surrounding mountains. Essentially all of the dense urban places in Los Angeles and nearby cities developed in the streetcar era. Many of them, fortunately, retained much of their urban form from that period. This is why transit works well in Los Angeles, why Los Angeles transit is highly productive with rising ridership. Transit experts cite Los Angeles as one of the transit successes of our time.

The additional oil being drilled now comes from extreme environments (the Arctic, deepwater) and/or is gotten using extreme techniques (fracking). At best it is very expensive, and likely to become more so as the easier drilling sites are exhausted. Even if you don't care about the environmental degradation involved in these sites (BP had a little problem with that) you might care about the increasing expense of getting that oil. The oil economy can live for a while, especially with the billions of dollars of tax and other subsidies provided by the US government, but it will get increasingly dysfunctional. We can either prepare for that or let it wallop us over the head when it gets really bad.

[jetgraphics]

Originally Posted by Carlite

[1] For very large numbers of people, this is clearly true. Wilshire Boulevard deserves a subway. It was identified as the best potential rapid transit in the country by New York based experts in the 1970's. But there are lots of corridors, especially in Los Angeles, where the demand doesn't justify the expense and difficulty of building [2] a rail line. Los Angeles is a famously "polycentric" city, with large numbers of people working not just in Downtown but in Burbank, Century City etc. You can't run rail lines between all of them, but you can run [3] bus lines.

[1] The efficiency of rail is not limited to "large numbers of people," but population consolidation and distance between stations. A rail line that serves clusters separated by sufficient distance to raise average velocity will be more than satisfactory.
A multi-tiered comprehensive rail system will be necessary - with express commuter service, local service, elevated monorail, subways, people movers, funiculars, and so on.
[2] The automobile-centric development post-1950s is certainly not congruent to urban rail. However, the cost of living in that development will inevitably become too much. I foresee an ever rising cost for pavement and highway infrastructure that will not be acceptable over the long term. Whereas rail infrastructure's durability and longevity will recommend it.
[3] Even with buses, a road has a fixed limit on throughput. You can't keep adding lanes to accommodate population growth - cities can't waste their surface area. Whereas a single rail can scale upward in carrying capacity by various means - adding cars to a train - headway - scheduling and spacing control. By some estimates, a single track has the equivalent carrying capacity of 9 lanes of superhighway. A four track rail system (like NYC's metro) is therefore equivalent to a 36 lane superhighway, in a fraction of the space.

We're in a situation that should have been resolved starting in the 1970s, when it was obvious that the USA was no longer Queen of Oil. As imports have steadily risen, the "powers that be" kept subsidizing the wasteful and unsustainable (but convenient) automobile / petroleum / highway mode. And now, it's 40 years later, and we're arguing over subsidizing electric cars, as if they're a solution, and refusing to deal with reality.

With a finite and fixed fuel budget - electric powered rail can haul the most.
With a finite amount of available surface area - rail can scale with population growth.
For durability, longevity and utility - train track and rolling stock have a far longer lifespan than pavement and petro powered 2 ton all weather recliners.

The obvious conclusion is that expansion of passenger rail service must be in parallel to population consolidation, to maximize efficiency and performance. If the population density is not addressed, any proposed rail system will be less than its potential.

It will probably take a collapse to "third world" status before any positive change occurs - if it's not too late.