[Slauson Slim]

"Disaster or not, what was the alternative? As I said before, the tracks were by and large in place in the streets before cars; as soon as someone could afford a car, they ditched public transport for all the usual reasons (poor service, freedom, privacy, independence, status), reducing revenue. There is simply no way, even if it had occurred to the owners of the PE and LARy, to relocate all the tracks to run along the curb, which is the only alternative I can think of--impractical and cost-prohibitive. Anyone who looked at the exponential growth of car registrations through the '20s could see that streetcars, as they were laid out originally, were doomed."

Did you ever ride the streetcars? I did - PE to Santa Monica or Long Beach. Cars to downtown shopping with my mom, Hollywood, etc. Fond memories. I remember the wicker seats on the old cars. Middle and working class folks rode the cars to work and shop. What happened in LA happened elsewhere is what happened to the railroads - deliberate downgrading of the service by the owners to persuade folks to go to autos, and transit systems to move to buses. Petroleum and internal combustion engines. LA streetcar public transport was doomed by deliberate management decisions. The LA I grew up in had a reasonable, timely, environmentally sound and useful public transit system. And that's not nostalgia. Subways in NYC and London and SF Bay Area, and street cars in Salt Lake City, Seattle, Sacramento, SF, San Diego etc. move people. It works. I went to work and to college on the streetcars in SF. It's madness to commute via auto from The Valley or Long Beach or Orange County daily on the freeways - one person, one car, bumper to bumper driving when they have just woken up or tired after a day at work. 1 - 2 hour commutes. In SF people still stand in the street to catch the street cars.