Cahuenga Pass: 1940’s. Photo courtesy of Tom Wetzel.

In the 1940’s, the newly constructed Hollywood Freeway featured a center median streetcar. By the mid 1950s, the public transportation was gone, the highway lanes were widened, and we suffer the results today.

California cities are once again using light rail systems to get people around. At first these trains seem like fun tourist attractions, as in San Diego or San Francisco, but gradually they become part of a genuine urban revival. Opposition to the trains usually comes from anti-tax advocates who see any spending of funds for the good of all as being individually harmful.

In Los Angeles, the constant traffic and congestion on the San Diego Freeway (405) would seem evidence enough that we need a light rail system from Santa Clarita to Long Beach. Most of the growth in Los Angeles is occuring in the northern part of the county in places like Valencia, Palmdale, Lancaster. As thousands of new single family homes are built up there, the roads are overwhelmed with cars. Pollution, stress, wasted hours spent in traffic…the need for an alternative to the car is clear.

While we are building a light rail system, we can also start rezoning the San Fernando Valley to allow for 8-10 story apartments along streets like Sepulveda and Van Nuys Blvd. with retail shops on the ground floor and a streetcar line running down the center median………..more on this concept in future articles.