L.A. Moves Closer to Bringing Streetcars Back. You Can Help Tomorrow Night
My favorite alternative connects the black line running down Broadway to the yellow line snaking through South Central Los Angeles and around the Staples Center. See all the alternatives here.
Tomorrow night, the L.A. Streetcar team and Metro will hold a public meeting to discuss what options will be studied for a new streetcar system for Downtown Los Angeles. There are seven options on the table, all of them serve a different need, and all of them will bring something new, or rather something old, back to the Downtown.
There’s plenty of information about the project and meeting online. You can get the meeting details, read a short briefing put together by Metro, or visit the official LA Streetcar homepage and comment on the alternatives. Last but not least, the streetcar boosters have their own webpage at Go LA Streetcar.
Last week, the mapping blog Big Map Blog, released an old map of the streetcar system from 105 years ago. The quality of the old streetcar system has become something of an urban legend among transportation reformers. People talk about the system as though it provided a universal transit system that was unrivaled.
And looking at the map, it’s easy to say why.
Yup, the old streetcars went to Staples Center. You can see a lot more of the 1906 map at The Big Map Blog.
But as impressive as the old streetcars were, it’s time to look forward, at what’s being offered by the current proposals. None of the proposals can replace what used to exist, but each of them brings something new to the table.
