I've been waiting for you to do a video about LA! Car free Angeleno here 👋🏼 I just visited the Southern California Railroad museum this past Sunday, so very fitting to see you do a video about our long gone streetcar network!
LA native here who has yet to buy a car - biking around and taking public transit are my forms of protest against the car-centric culture here! Thank you for your work on this channel and spreading awareness!
LA viewer here! I am absolutely astounded to find out that ALL of my favorite places in the city are mixed use developments built along the street car lines! It really goes to show how much of an impact infrastructure can have on urban fabric! Its nearly a century later, crazy! Thanks for the great video
LA viewer here, I live in Highland Park, right off gold line! If you're ever back in town, I highly recommend walking around HP, its a lovely and vibrant community full of unique local culture. I've found that the people who live in LA who care about urbanism tend to make an effort to live near one of the lines. I suppose that is obvious and true for most places, but since Metro has such a (relatively) small area of coverage and completely misses some of LA's largest communities, your assessment of Angelino's prioritization of urbanism in the traditional sense is pretty much spot on. That said its getting better. Measure M has a lot of great new services for both light rail and BRT. I'm extremely optimistic about the prospect of living car free in LA in the future. Hopefully that future is sooner rather than later... Thanks for the great content as usual. I loved the deep dive into what's left of LA's historic transit corridors, already looking forward to next week's video!
Highland Park is full of nimby's just as much as the rest of LA. There's York (sort of) and 2-3 blocks of Figueroa and everything else is basically single family. Car free los angeles starts with loosening zoning laws substantially. I've live in Pasadena for ~12 years and STILL can't take a train to glendale - LA's metro plan is a joke. It should be about accessibility, not commercial opportunities.
Ay! I live in glassell Park and take the gold line into downtown to work every day. Weve got the best region of Los Angeles in my opinion. Equidistant from Glendale, Pasadena, and DTLA. I'm a little cheeses the video didn't give bigger praise to the NELA area.
I just moved to City West so I'm only 0.5 miles to 7th street Metro Center. On nice weekends the Expo (E) Line is pretty busy especially with bike riders so there's not enough bike space on it, but at least you beat Saturday traffic.
This is one of my favorite videos you’ve done. As a former LA resident who primarily relied on transit and cycling, I think the city has come a long way in recent years, in part thanks to the good bones of some of these historic streetcar development patterns. Also, there is a special kind of schadenfreude you enjoy as a transit rider in a place where soul-crushing traffic jams are so central to the city’s modern identity.
I think that "Comfort, Speed, Safety" motto inside the Pacific Electric logo says it all! If our modern public transit systems focused on those three issues instead of being built and operated strictly to get someone else to drive less on "your" highway then we'd be all set! When we do build transit systems nowadays it's practically always for somebody else, not "us" whatever we think the "us" is. That's not my view, and not the view of most people watching this, but it certainly is the view of the majority of the general public. If we keep building transit systems to con all of our poor people into using them and never plan to actually ride transit ourselves then transit will forever stay crappy and no one will want to ride it! We need to invest in proper transit! "Comfort, Speed, Safety"! 100 years later, that's still what people need in transit! Not whatever it is that our transit planners are doing!
You've got a point there. If I was designing a transit line I would definitely design it to take me to the places I wanted to go to. I have this crazy idea for the Bay Area. Basically, there's a region called the tri-valley that as I understand it extends from Walnut Creek to Livermore. BART connects to Walnut Creek and Dublin/Pleasanton, but when they tried to run an extension out to San Ramon several years back, a bunch of oil money NIMBYs killed it because it would bring in poor people, which pisses me off so goddamn much. My dream for the region would therefore be to have a light rail line that started at the Martinez Amtrak station, then stopped in Vine Hill, Pacheco, Pleasant Hill, Contra Costa Centre, north Walnut Creek, south Walnut Creek, Alamo, Danville, north San Ramon, south San Ramon, Dublin, and Pleasanton, and ended in Livermore. Maybe the north end could even extend over the bridge to Benicia and Vallejo, since BART doesn't see fit to connect that far north. It would do so much for the livability of this whole area.
@@teuast Oh no! Please don’t start with this! I’ve been fantasizing about this rail link since forever! I don’t need to go down that rabbit hole again! There’s an old rail ROW that has been “railbanked” (what a scam that railbanking is!) that covers this exact route. And it was clear that we need this link since the beginning because BART had it on their “fantasy” maps from day one. In a sane Bay Area this would have already been built! But we have all those wonderful NIMBYs that oppose electric rail on “environmental” grounds, so yeah… Good times!
This is so true! It can often feel like the design is for the downtrodden (or, those who can't own/drive a car). I think there's a kind of separatism and dehumanization that comes from car dependent infrastructure. Whenever I drive, it's so easy to think that all the other cars on the road are just obstacles rather than real people. Having ridden public transport more this past year, I've grown to appreciate the human aspect of it. Whenever I ride, I see real people and get to occasionally talk with them. You see a lot more walks of life.
I grew up in venice and Santa Monica, and absolutely loved this video, there are so many buildings you pointed out that I didn’t even realize were old transit stations. I really hope LA can be saved
I've pretty much never left the LA area my whole life except for a few short trips. The car based multi-nuclei geography of the city is definitely a challenge to overcome. It seems like every city in the county is just kinda doing it's own thing sometimes. I know the city is trying to improve transit before the Olympics in a few years, but even still it's going to be hard to change the fabric of places like the San Fernando Valley (which in itself has a greater population than Philadelphia and is extremely transit starved and decentralized). I think people here really want to do away with the car dependency, especially with things like parking requirement laws increasing housing prices, but it's gonna be a tough journey.
Decentralization of cities is the way to go actually, but maybe not what you think - for me (European) centralization means, that all companies/shops/... Are in one place that's usually considered the center of the city. This inherently creates some problems, because every mode of transportation reaches a limit at some point, and upgrading the systems can cost A LOT of money, that could also be spent otherwise (schools, health,...) I think a lack of centralization isn't the problem of American cities, but density is. You can have several high density (walkable) zones throughout your city (thereby no central part), but because each of those zones is walkable, you alleviate a lot of traffic already.
@@jan-lukas Decentralization is exactly why we can't densify. Nimbys are opposed to density (for monetary, racist, classist reasons), and because things are controlled by the city governments their lobbying efforts against things they don't want work most of time. Hence why it is illegal to build dense mixed use development across the country despite it not being against state law or federal law. Having more centralized planning can work out in different ways. Like zoning is centralized in Japan, but that just allowed people and developers to do what they want with way less push back. If I wanted to turn my single family home into a 6 story condo, there ain't nothing the neighbors couldn't stop me since you would have take it up with the feds. The same thing rings true for transit options. Nimbys don't want it, so we now have use centralized power to steamroll them.
@@birdiewolf3497 Decentralized authority is certainly a problem (the problem, really, in LA), but what Jan was talking about is decentralized population distribution
LA viewer here, I’m actually moving to a new neighborhood soon solely because of my desire for more walkable living. I really dislike feeling so disconnected and yearn for more of a community-oriented environment. I hope we can work on making this a reality for more neighborhoods in LA! we have so much potential.
OC viewer here, so happy to see the laguna hills mall (5:22) make an appearance in this video! This dead and ugly mall is currently being redeveloped into a massive mixed use retail, office, and housing project that will have 1500 apartments and become a center of walkability in an otherwise car hellscape. I drive by it to get to work and am so excited seeing it become something useful
I’m an LA viewer! I’ve never owned a car and I only travel by bike or train. It’s difficult at times but we’re definitely out there and we definitely feel the city fighting back every time I want to go somewhere. The only reason I’m even here is because our union is local only. I’m actually surprised there wasn’t as much crowds while you were here you must have surveyed the trains during San Diego comic con that’s usually when there’s less congestion. In my opinion the train system has a lot of work ahead not only in terms of accessibility or accessing such a stretched out city, but just the speed and frequency that carts come and go it’s about 18-25 minute waits especially the Redline. Some of its due to the construction but more than ever I feel the metro becoming less and less dependable than it’s ever been. Now whenever I go get my bike serviced in Pasadena- instead of taking the Redline> Union Station> Gold Line. I just bypass all the redline waiting and bike down the LaRiver headed to Chinatown and you can hop on the Lincoln/Cypress and immediately be on the Gold Line! I’d really love to see an LA be fully connected one day where one could access Glendale and Pasadena and more of West Hollywood area. It would be a great incentive for people when going out for drinks or not having to crowd the streets with more Ubers and cars. Hope to see you around these parts and thank you for your videos and hitting all the spots in LA transit!
LA viewer here. Culver City is our primary hub these days. The progress in LA is slower than we want, but it's noticeably better in the 10 years we've lived here.
I live in LA and am very passionate about the urbanism past, present, and future. Wish you got to experience the LA River and the urbanism (or lack thereof) around it. I try to bike as often as I can to my destinations (I'm in Highland Park), but the car is still king and bike lanes will often unceremoniously end and dump you dangerously in the middle of traffic with no direction of where to go. We need more bike infrastructure and more importantly a network of it, so people can use it to get places. The LA River path is a great example of a separated bike path, but the connections to/from it are really horrible. It should be a backbone of a more bikeable LA.
@@sleddy01 that's what I thought. It's a dirty reality of non-car infastructure and separated bike paths that urbanist videos like to pretend doesn't exist. It's not as bad where I live in Phoenix as what I've seen in LA, but still an issue.
LA native here and I love your videos. I really LA brings back a sort of streetcar system. Hope LA Metro can build up also the new Crenshaw line just opened I seen a picture of the same street 100 years apart from 1922 to 2022 good to know there's a rail line serving the community again
I could see this kind of video becoming a "Rate My City" format in which you evaluate the city of a commenter, subscriber, patron, etc. and point out what it's doing well and what it's not in terms of urbanism. I know that I personally have a lot of passion about this topic but often don't know how to translate that into actual suggestions for improving my own city, and I suspect that other people are the same way. A more focused look at a single city might help us/me learn how to do that better.
I've lived in LA for 5 years, been in West Hollywood for the last year or so, and haven't had a car since last December. It's super walkable where I live (multiple grocery stores, couple pet stores, restaurants and bars, couple movie theaters, etc), but it can be a pain to get to certain areas (i.e. the Valley). One thing to bring up is the bus system, which is pretty great. They're typically clean and the Transit app works great with up to date info on bus arrivals. Compared to cars, you do need to account for longer trips but not having to deal with the stress of driving in traffic makes it worth it in my opinion.
LA (Torrance) viewer here. I started watching *because* I recently moved here and was shocked at how bad the urban planning was, and wanted to learn more about how it could be better.
I live in Culver City and the build out of the Metro allows our household to have 1 car instead of 2. We use it as much as possible, and hope to eventually get rid of our car completely! LA is a great city for public transit - our weather also means you can comfortably take it year round. The old adage of "nobody walks in LA" is becoming less true all the time!
Grew up in Glendale, watching now from Northern Virginia! For as much as LA relies on freeways for everything, it still feels more walkable than all of NoVa besides Arlington/Alexandria along the metro lines. Weather definitely plays a part but I'd mostly attribute it to the aggregation of varied retail spaces along the former electric railway streets you identified. DC has some areas that are nicer to walk around than a Brand Blvd or Colorado Blvd, like M St in Georgetown and 14th St, but even while they have fewer lanes, they can often be harder to traverse (e.g. no protected bike lanes, small sidewalks). Plus, LA just has a lot more of these retail-heavy corridors, even if they are diluted with parking lots. All that said I do *not* miss the long drives to the nearest metro station in LA.
I'm glad you showed how LA really was built for trains, and then slowly degraded for cars from the 1950s until almost present day when things started to slowly come back to its roots. I think a lot of people think LA is completely unwalkable, but that's not true. Its no Chicago or New York but its way better than most of its peer cities. The Pasadena gold line is one of the most scenic light rail lines I've taken btw, the trip from DTLA to Pasadena through the old streetcar suburbs in the foothills is a real treat, even if the stretch through Highland Park is painfully slow.
Watching from Pasadena. I think you're right that there are some good bones, though it can feel somewhat hopeless living here. The traffic makes walking a loud and smelly experience. They reduced the lanes in Old Town/Collorado Blvd during the pandemic and I thought it made the area more pleasant. If only they kept it or made it a pedestrian only zone... The city of Pasadena has been trying to build up more protected bike lanes and improve walkability, but resistance from car culture folks is high. Personally I walk around town a lot, but biking is too dangerous for where I want to go.
Culver City resident here and very passionate about urbanism. I did spend 10 years in SF prior to here which probably shaped my views. CC is doing it right!
LA resident and huge urbanism nerd here! 🙋♂️ Gave up my car almost 10 years ago (yes, it’s possible), and the city has a growing urbanism movement (mostly among millennials and younger).
Another LA viewer and follower here in DTLA. Thanks for the video and really interesting to trace the current most walkable corridors to the original transit network but I suppose it makes sense. There is certainly progress being made overall from an urbanism standpoint and a bit of a revival of urban living. I, for one, look forward to the opening of the regional connector which will help improve trip length and minimize transfers while especially serving us well here in Little Tokyo/Arts District.
Greater LA viewer here! I live in a streetcar suburb called Alamitos Beach in the City of Long Beach. It's delightful. We have a superb mix of housing types, including many charming fourplexes. The streetcar that ran through the center of the neighborhood no longer exists, but its street now has a very useful cycletrack that provides a quick and fun way to reach Downtown Long Beach.
I live in LA. People here don’t much think about urbanism. They think more about their careers and the weather. You go East for the culture. You go West for the weather. Public transit here is kind of seen as a dirty necessity for poor people. I rode a motorcycle here because I didn’t like being stuck in traffic. I got hit by a car in January and am still rehabilitating, so I take public transit exclusively. You can get pretty much everywhere in LA on transit between the buses and trains. It just takes about 2x as long and most every public transit shuts down just before midnight. Plus, there can be some walking and people in LA hate to walk unless they are hiking. I’ve been stuck downtown at 11:30pm before. Don’t look vulnerable.
LA resident here. Really enjoyed the deep-dive and exploring the streetcar's legacy. I was initially intrigued after moving here years back when I'd see streets which "didn't make sense" in terms of their structure and orientation (the massive medians in streets like San Vicente or the two parallel Santa Monica Blvds in Beverly Hills with a very particular treatment of the land in between them and how you see an almost identical structure in Santa Monica between Main St and Neilson Way). I've gone down some fascinating rabbit holes as a result researching the streetcar system on how they shaped the city. Really great insight you've provided.
Long Beach CA person here and man, I gotta say it’s been a REALLY long time since I’ve visited many of those areas, Culver City , Venice. We’re so spoiled for choice here in LB and since it takes 45 mins to travel 20 mins on the freeways, I roll my eyes at the thought of it. Thanks for the video lot of good footage!
re: The Olive Substation. I’ve passed by that building hundreds of times while walking my dog, and always thought it was unique looking, but had no idea what it was until watching this video. So, thank you for the education! And yes. Los Angeles based viewer here. Love your channel!
LA transit nerd here, this was beyond what I ever expected to see on this channel to make me feel seen. Live right on the expo line at la brea and I ride metro, metrolink, and amtrak all over. I also bike but it's not quite as popular as I hope it would be! Can't wait to see what the remainder of measure M does for the metro area
I'm not a regular viewer, I was brought here after rewatching a Not Just Bikes video. I'm from LA, I'll probably always love my car but I want to see better transit wherever it's possible. It would be great to have an option like I did when living in Boston. Thanks for making the video!
I notice that most/all of these areas already had decent transit either past or present. Do you think there's any future in redeveloping car-dependent suburbia that's relatively close to potential rail corridors? I feel like with streets being pretty immutable, the exclusionairy street layouts with lots of dead ends and very few connections both between neighborhoods and to the main thoroughfares look like they pose quite a challenge.
Thankfully the areas CityNerd talked about in the video are on a grid and don't have Florida's problem of cul-de-sacs literally everywhere. LA, the cities in the SoCal, and/or LA county could work with NGOs to develop affordable housing or create a corporation that directly hires construction workers to build affordable housing near transit, both present and future.
The trick for cul-de-sacs is to make them into bike/ped shortcuts by just extending multiuse paths from the end of 1 to the next road. This makes a sort of squiggly grid for quiet bikes & pedestrians (well some people talk loudly), but keeps the very hostile to car travel layout that was the origin of cul-de-sac nonsense in the first place. You would then need to place transit connections in such a way as to be a convient distance by bike/foot using the shortcut network for as much of the area as possible while minimizing bulldozing of existing houses. (Because thats expensive and unpopular) The key to excellent transit is having a large network where each mode feeds the others. Just look at the road network to understand this, parking spaces, small roads, large arterials, and highways feed eachother seemlessly so its effortless to have your GPS find an easy route from Maine to California if you want to drive it. Doing the same with transit would be a nightmare in the US right now. (Excluding flying as a form of transit, which i doubt anyone thinks it is)
I've just discovered and subscribed to City Nerd Yes, Virginia there are LA viewers that place a very high priority on urbanism. Your view on how LA's defunct Red and Yellow cars could be SoCal's salvation was truly insightful and really well done. For generations DTLA was vacated after work hours and essentially became a ghost town. .But one positive of this neglect is that most of its legacy buildings were never demolished. Combine that with all the new development taking place in DTLA and LA is definitely becoming more and more salvageable. I'm up for any objective criticism of Los Angeles and I liked how you actually referred to its inhabitants as Angelinos. Thank you. Job well done. Keep up the good work.
NJB brought me here, and I'm excited to join your community of subscribers! As an Angeleno born and raised in Echo Park, one of the neighborhoods you highlighted, I have vivid childhood memories of remnants of the old streetcar tracks (of course not the streetcar). My bike tire once slipped on a section of metal streetcar track in front of Angelus Temple/Echo Park Lake, just down the street of the shot at 8:31 lol I can't help but think of urban development and gentrification in streetcar-connected areas, a topic that I believe deserves more attention in urbanist circles. In their prime, neighborhoods like Echo Park and nearby MacArthur Park/Westlake were among the most desirable in a less car-centric LA. However, following the decline of the streetcar system, these areas faced years of disinvestment and neglect. They became havens for low-income, working-class brown immigrant families, providing a sense of home despite the challenges. In recent times, the influx of new investments and residents into Echo Park has profoundly altered its character and demographic makeup. While there are benefits to this revitalization, it's impossible to overlook its impact on the longstanding brown communities. The rapid gentrification and displacement of these families have drastically changed the cultural landscape and community dynamics. The new curbside charm and trendy establishments, while appealing, overshadow the reality that such development often came at the expense of those who had little means to influence their neighborhood's transformation. It's a bittersweet reflection on how revitalization sometimes happens without the participation of long-established community members. This transformation in Echo Park represents more than just physical redevelopment. It's a story about the people and cultures disproportionately affected by these changes. It emphasizes the need for development strategies that respect and preserve the unique history and culture of neighborhoods while protecting and including the communities that have long been part of their fabric. As we consider revitalizing these neighborhoods with improved transit options, it's essential to tread carefully to avoid what's known as 'green gentrification.' The challenge lies in making sure that such developments are inclusive and equitable, maintaining the community's soul while adapting to modern needs. This includes addressing the specific impacts of gentrification on brown communities and understanding the nuances of these complex urban challenges. Your mention of Culver City as 'antiseptic and upscale' resonates with my feelings about many of the areas you discussed. Larchmont, Santa Monica, Venice, Abbott Kinney, Highland Park, Pasadena, and Echo Park have all undergone significant changes, becoming more upscale and less diverse than in the past. Your video kickstarts an important conversation about the intersection of historical urban policies and their contemporary impacts on diverse communities. It's crucial to continue exploring these stories to fully grasp and address the challenges of urban development and gentrification in our cities.
Angeleno checking in. Yes we care about urbanism- we desperately need it- and we even watch youtube. Great video! We realized that many of the places we like to hang out all have the street car in common.
I moved to as an adult 20 years ago, and thankfully searched for and found a walking neighborhood to settle in. They do exist! love your channel, I'm car-light and use my bicycle and walking unless I absolutely need to drive. I am o e of those LA people who want more alternatives to cars!
Not an LA viewer, but I did grow up there. I knew that LA used to have a streetcar network, but I never put it together that all my favorite neighborhoods were streetcar suburbs!
LA resident, I am a user of LA Public transit. Mostly the subway/ light rail. I am lucky in that I have a stop that is a 5-10 minute walk. I work downtown and love it that I don’t have to drive. In about a year I will be able to connect to LAX directly which is great for me as I fly out about twice a month. I only wish that LA would build faster rail and start building more connections. Eventually we will need to start adding express lines which will help build ridership so that it can compete will using cars. That is the only way we can start moving people to look to transit as an option to cars.
LA viewer here. You showed my neighborhood! I enjoyed your overview and looks at street atmosphere in the old red car and yellow car lines. I would have loved to see some views of streets during the pacific electric heyday with comparisons to present day LA as the ghosts of old LA slowly fade away
I was born and raised in Los Angeles, I grew up throughout East Hollywood, silver lake, echo park, highland park, studio city, Los feliz, Glendale, and Pasadena. The expansion of the light rail and metro line system is impressive and really awesome that it now reaches to Santa Monica via expo line. However, my family and I stopped taking public transit bc of all the homeless junkies that have infested the metro system. It is literally an open air drug asylum w ppl shooting up needles, smoking meth, and defecating on seats. It is a really sad situation to see the public metro system become a public failure.
Born and raised in greater LA. I use a car when I stay in my area because the transport is not too good (Pomona Valley) - however I use public transit whenever I go into LA proper (usually once a week). It has defiantly gotten better- especially as the Olympics are coming with new metro rail lines.
I'm an LAer without a car living in Echo Park. Proud to see the neighborhood on here! You're right it's one of the more walkable and better designed in the city. Kinda feels like Brooklyn with palm trees. Mostly I bike everywhere, and maybe I'm crazy, but it's not a bad bike city if you're not afraid of biking next to cars. Mostly flat, weather's always nice, drivers are (mostly) considerate, and if I'm feeling lazy it's easy enough to combine bike with subway to get wherever I need to go in the same time or less as it would take to drive (especially counting time saved looking for a parking space). Still, I watch this channel because it's nice to dream of what could be. Or maybe I just like getting depressed about the way things are. Either way, thanks!
Watching from LA, realizing all my favorite places in the city are literally right on the old red and yellow lines. Blew my mind seeing some familiar buildings and realizing they're the old transfer stations!
I live in SD but I love taking trips to LA. There's so many charming areas if you look for them. Recently I visited Montrose and Descanso gardens. It was amazing.
LA viewer here. I didn't realize the old streetcars left such a lasting legacy on urban design. I knew there was a reason certain areas feel more walkable.
If one didn't grow up in Los Angeles in the 1940s and 50s, it's impossible to appreciate how much quality of life has been lost since then. The points made in this video about the effect of car culture on street life is certainly true. But it goes far beyond that impact. Sixty years ago L.A. drivers were not aggressive, overtly hostile to anyone who delayed them, self-entitled to risk the lives of others and their own to get where they want to go at all costs. The transformation from public transportation to millions of closed, individual automobiles, seemingly has elevated the importance of the individual over the public good, which plays out in myriad destructive ways.
I'm an Angeleno, an occasional viewer of your channel (now subscribed) and watch plenty of TH-cam generally. I found this video fascinating and educational. I have lived in LA for 15 years, and your video was the first time I've heard anybody point out that all the good neighborhoods were built around street cars during that era. It was a lightbulb moment for me. Please keep up the good work!
Thanks for the insightful video. I lived in LA (Venice?Marina/Santa Monica mostly) for 36 years but have recently moved to Auckland, New Zealand. The transit challenges are very similar. The potential is there in both cities. It just takes a lot of time and money.
LA area viewer here! I’m down in Long Beach and have chosen to stay in LB due to my neighborhoods great walkability and a large portion of Long Beach being walkable. Any neighborhoods I would live in LA that are walkable have become so expensive I could never afford it. I have come to love so many of the little communities in the greater LA area, many that offer a much more walkable neighborhood than LA!
LA subscriber! Born and raised in south east LA and for a while bro I used to live in Santa Monica and work on main st in Venice for a couple years until the shut down happened and things got really bad around us so we left 1.5 years ago and are now in South East LA again. We are saving up to move out, an😊d have visited some of our options like Boise, Seattle, Portland, flagstaff, Prescott, phoenix, Sedona, and most of central and Northern California. We are now thinking of visiting Reno because we still haven’t found somewhere we are excited about. Thinking the the biggest little city might be our spot. Enjoying your videos and learning a lot 🥂
This is your best video yet. I get a bit frustrated when people describe LA as the epitome of a post-war, Sunbelt city. Having lived in LA and spent some time in Dallas, I can tell you that LA is NOT Dallas (or Houston, or Atlanta, whatever). It's not New York, either (or even San Francisco), but it's not what a lot of urbanists imagine it to be.
LA viewer raised in SF, pining for more pedestrian friendly neighborhoods and less car reliance. I miss enjoying the journey of moving through a city, rather than just wanting to get it over with.
This video reminded me that as a kid I asked my uncle about the rails in our streets in Richmond Va. He told me we don't have a streetcar no more. I looked up the old streetcars service in RVa that started back in 1888. Streetcars would be better than the pulse bus!
I am an Angeleno for nearly 20 years now. I have lived downtown for the past several years, and my ability to get most places without a car in a reasonable amount of time has skyrocketed in that time. The LA Metro regional connector -- which broke the Gold Line in two, merging one end with the Expo Line (so you can go from Santa Monica to East LA) and the other with the Blue Line (so you can go from Long Beach to Azusa) -- has made it much, much easier for me to get just about anywhere I need to go. I can even take my kid to daycare on it. Granted! I live downtown, not far from both Seventh Street Metro and Union Station, the two Metro hubs for the whole region. But there are whole weeks that pass when I don't use my car, and I think the city is moving in the right direction, especially if you don't mind walking or biking (and I don't). There's still way too much sprawl.
LA Viewer here. Grew up in the East SF Valley - No/Ho. It's one of several communities where the freeway cut up and divided the city. I'd love a street car that just went straight along Victory Blvd the full length of the valley.
As a native Angeleno, I appreciate the optimism presented. I hope the 2028 Olympics brings enough energy to help the current public transportation infrastructure to fruition but time will only tell. Lastly, u briefly mentioned Germany. Having recently come back from Berlin, the walkability factor is amazing. The loop was a game changer in enjoying that amazing city. Looking forward to watch more of your content. Thanks!
Big fans of City Nerd, my husband and I. We lived in Philly for many years before moving to Los Angeles. Great climate and we did find a decently walkable neighborhood (near 3rd and LaBrea). After twenty years in Los Angeles, the adventure has worn off. May Days in this city are among the great worker festivals, so that's good. Wonderful mix of cultures and languages here. But as we age, this city gets tougher. Also, the political climate of this country grows ominous. Again. Both of us lived in other countries in our early years, so we might become seasonal expatriates.
As a LA resident, we do have lots of transit folks that are working hard on the LRT, BRT and Active transportation.. But I think trams and streetcars have to be the next frontier. Good video!
Another LA viewer here. As a kid I had to be driven everywhere but when the expo line opened I would take it to Santa Monica College and one summer to DTLA for an internship. I would also take the bus up to Hollywood to go see concerts. Some of the best times I"ve had in the city have been with just going around with a tap card.
When I lived in Echo Park 20 years ago there was an attempt to revive the street-car line (guess it was a cable car as there was an open-top groove in the road that the car was centered over) that ran up Echo Park Avenue from the lake to somewhere north of Fargo - the old power station is still there and used by whatever the bus system is now - it was RTD I think. The group had located the original cable car that was used on the line in the 1940s and it was sitting in someone's backyard in Echo Park. When the group was told that it would cost over $100k to just refurbish the car - never mind install all the systems required to operate the line - the enthusiasm for the line dwindled.
LA viewer here! Now in the San Gabriel Valley (Alhambra), but recently moved from the Palms/Culver City area. It was amazing to see downtown Culver City transform with the new street designs and bike lanes/bus lanes. One thing that is interesting about the LA metro area is how weather plays an impact on walkability. Palms/Culver City are both very dense and walkable, which is helped a lot by the very temperate weather. I live close to downtown Alhambra/Main Street, but since it's 10-15 degrees hotter than the Westside, it is much more difficult to walk places between the hours of, say, 11am-6pm in the summer. Of course, we don't have real winters, so maybe I'm just nitpicking...
Los Angeles reporting for duty! I’m a former clerk for the LA City Council. Two of my committees were Planning and Transportation. LA is improving its urban appeal. But, the convenience of mass transit is frustrated by slow connection service - and by vehicular traffic
With all due respect, Mr. Nerd, a huge amount of your audience lives in LA. You have it backwards, everyone in LA stays inside and rarely goes out. Do you see many people walking around where you're filming? Everyone stays indoors and only goes out if they absolutely have to and always in their cars. With just a few exceptions there is almost no public space in LA. No parks, no city squares, no plazas. It's just 7 lane stroads with struggling businesses and single family houses everywhere else. They basically took the best climate region in the US and paved it over so nobody could enjoy it. It's miserable and depressing here, and there needs to be some drastic actions for that to change.
I lived in LA my entire life, 33 years, not that long but not that short. Lived in Riverside, South Pasadena and now the West Side and mostly Santa Monica. Excellent video and I love your channel, I watch all the time, mostly dreaming of moving to more liveable citites and nerding out on transit with you. My favorite part of LA is actually Arts District, not sure if that was a rail-line corridor or not but it's got a bunch of old buildings and factories, re-purposed into bars and restaurants with cool murals here and there. There's all sorts of venues and weird spots hidden around and Little Tokyo is just a short walk away and can be fun too. Culver City is decent now too thanks for doing it justice. Side note: I would really love to see a video on Austrailia's transit system, seems like such a high standard of living there, and the transit looks decent, but I've heard it has it's shortcomings and peculiarities.
I've lived in Pasadena and Whittier though I'm now midwest based. There was a lot to love about both areas though the traffic and housing prices is what motivated me to relocate. It's interesting to see the infrastructure develop and there was so much I loved about LA generally, I'm not opposed to moving back at some point. I also grew up at an of the old terminus of the Orange County Pacific Electric lines and constantly bemoaned the loss.
Hey I'm a recent transplant to the east LA area. Having grown up in Portland, OR and moving more directly from 8 years in Montreal, not gonna lie it's been a rough transition. I'm mourning the loss of a comprehensive metro (particularly as I write this on holiday in Paris) and safe bike lanes, hell my best friend just got hit by a car biking in Culver city and it makes me even more apprehensive to try. The metro from my home to the beach takes over an hour-thirty because these trains move so damn slow (and it's all so far). The second day I was here I bought my first car and it has been essential to everything I've done since. Here's hoping the new job, pay bump, music scene, and food makes up for it. If nothing else, it's encouraging to see some progress being made in a lot of areas or at least talked about finally. And theres still high speed rail to look forward to... eventually. Thanks for the recommendations of cool neighbourhood streets to check out! :D
LA (Pasadena) viewer. This video showed two buildings I used to work at and even the grocery store I shopped at for years. Pasadena usually doesn’t get this kind of attention in videos. This video really demonstrates how LA has some amazing walkable neighborhoods . . . you just have to drive to them. One of my hobbies is visiting sports venues around the country. The more arenas and stadiums I visit, the more apparent the lack of transit near Dodgers Stadium becomes.
I’m an LA viewer! But I am probably an outlier as I’m from the east coast and only moved here for work. I watch your channel as equal parts indignation at the lack of good planning in my own city and straight up escapist fantasy. If I could live somewhere else, I would.
I live in LA. County, actually. Glendora. It's about 25 miles east of downtown LA. I was a long time bicycle commuter in other cities. I guess that's why your channel is of interest to me.
I'm originally from the SGV near some of the areas you highlighted. To answer your question, it's a combination of culture, driving everywhere (little time for TH-cam videos), and that there's so much to do. You must actively try to be bored anywhere in the coastal metro areas of SoCal, unlike where I live now that is incredibly boring unless you are into drinking, sports, or fighting for a parking spot at a trailhead. Younger people in SoCal have been using a mix of private and public transit for decades since the region has neighborhoods that are distinctly car-oriented and transit/walking-oriented (where I live now, in the Seattle metro, we have this but there is only one area you always visit using transit). For example, when I lived in San Diego, I'd catch a trolley if I was headed to anything at the stadium, in downtown, or for a flight, but I'd drive to nearby suburban malls, strip malls, and my office.
I'm in LA. I don't own a car. I cycle most places and find the gold, red and blue lines helpful, but they only take me to a few places. Would love to see more investment in future lines and the outright removal of car traffic and parking in these neighborhood centers. I'm a big critic of American urban design and zoning and LA is a tough place to live for me. I see some potential, but i fear change is going to slow for me to stick it out. Just discovered your channel. Thanks for the video.
Yoohoo! I'm out here in LA! Huge fan of the dry humor. So glad you featured LA. I have a car but try to walk, ride my OneWheel or use public transit. The problem with public transit is that most trips take 4-10 times longer than driving.
Most people generally turn to the western region of LA county when looking for walkable communities, but people need to realize there are also extremely promising walkable communities appearing to the east too! Notably, Artesia and Fullerton. In the past few years, Artesia has made some incredibly promising progress. Due to the city's grid-like design, it had already been an extremely compact and walkable community for decades. However, recently, it has created an extensive network of painted bike lanes and has revived its downtown by widening its sidewalks and planting trees. Its downtown is lined with small businesses that bustle with life, and every night, you can see people on the streets frequenting stores and eating at restaurants outside. Additionally, it has launched an all-electric bus fleet and is also scheduled to be connected to DTLA by the West Santa Ana Branch light rail. So exciting! Meanwhile, in Orange County, Fullerton has preserved its compact downtown, and like Artesia, you can see people eating at restaurants, frequenting stores, and walking on the tree-lined streets. Additionally, the downtown is located right next to a MetroLink station. Other communities nearby have also been creating urban environments, such as Brea, and I hope that these communities can also get recognition for the amazing work they've been doing too!
![[TH] FS vs BME - VCT Ascension Pacific - Lower Bracket Final](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wnygqsR2Fig/mqdefault.jpg)
LA has the weather to be the most walkable place in the country, such a bummer we lost the streetcar network!
Los Angles is way to big for street cars. What they need is proper heavy rail with express service and redensification
LA has the weather to walk and bike all year round but wastes it to spend so much of people's lives in LA traffic lol
@@dudu5423 we had the most extensive streetcar network in the world and that was pre LRT
The Red Car network can be rebuilt! With BRT, as a treat.
I've been waiting for you to do a video about LA! Car free Angeleno here 👋🏼 I just visited the Southern California Railroad museum this past Sunday, so very fitting to see you do a video about our long gone streetcar network!
LA native here who has yet to buy a car - biking around and taking public transit are my forms of protest against the car-centric culture here! Thank you for your work on this channel and spreading awareness!
LA viewer here! I am absolutely astounded to find out that ALL of my favorite places in the city are mixed use developments built along the street car lines! It really goes to show how much of an impact infrastructure can have on urban fabric! Its nearly a century later, crazy! Thanks for the great video
LA viewer here, I live in Highland Park, right off gold line! If you're ever back in town, I highly recommend walking around HP, its a lovely and vibrant community full of unique local culture. I've found that the people who live in LA who care about urbanism tend to make an effort to live near one of the lines. I suppose that is obvious and true for most places, but since Metro has such a (relatively) small area of coverage and completely misses some of LA's largest communities, your assessment of Angelino's prioritization of urbanism in the traditional sense is pretty much spot on. That said its getting better. Measure M has a lot of great new services for both light rail and BRT. I'm extremely optimistic about the prospect of living car free in LA in the future. Hopefully that future is sooner rather than later...
Thanks for the great content as usual. I loved the deep dive into what's left of LA's historic transit corridors, already looking forward to next week's video!
Highland Park is full of nimby's just as much as the rest of LA. There's York (sort of) and 2-3 blocks of Figueroa and everything else is basically single family. Car free los angeles starts with loosening zoning laws substantially.
I've live in Pasadena for ~12 years and STILL can't take a train to glendale - LA's metro plan is a joke. It should be about accessibility, not commercial opportunities.
Ay! I live in glassell Park and take the gold line into downtown to work every day. Weve got the best region of Los Angeles in my opinion. Equidistant from Glendale, Pasadena, and DTLA. I'm a little cheeses the video didn't give bigger praise to the NELA area.
I just moved to City West so I'm only 0.5 miles to 7th street Metro Center.
On nice weekends the Expo (E) Line is pretty busy especially with bike riders so there's not enough bike space on it, but at least you beat Saturday traffic.
I love walking around there!
I live in burbank and take the heavy rail line to DTLA on occasion, walk/bus everywhere else
This is one of my favorite videos you’ve done. As a former LA resident who primarily relied on transit and cycling, I think the city has come a long way in recent years, in part thanks to the good bones of some of these historic streetcar development patterns. Also, there is a special kind of schadenfreude you enjoy as a transit rider in a place where soul-crushing traffic jams are so central to the city’s modern identity.
I think that "Comfort, Speed, Safety" motto inside the Pacific Electric logo says it all! If our modern public transit systems focused on those three issues instead of being built and operated strictly to get someone else to drive less on "your" highway then we'd be all set!
When we do build transit systems nowadays it's practically always for somebody else, not "us" whatever we think the "us" is. That's not my view, and not the view of most people watching this, but it certainly is the view of the majority of the general public. If we keep building transit systems to con all of our poor people into using them and never plan to actually ride transit ourselves then transit will forever stay crappy and no one will want to ride it!
We need to invest in proper transit! "Comfort, Speed, Safety"! 100 years later, that's still what people need in transit! Not whatever it is that our transit planners are doing!
Inspiring stuff!
I love this viewpoint!
You've got a point there. If I was designing a transit line I would definitely design it to take me to the places I wanted to go to.
I have this crazy idea for the Bay Area. Basically, there's a region called the tri-valley that as I understand it extends from Walnut Creek to Livermore. BART connects to Walnut Creek and Dublin/Pleasanton, but when they tried to run an extension out to San Ramon several years back, a bunch of oil money NIMBYs killed it because it would bring in poor people, which pisses me off so goddamn much. My dream for the region would therefore be to have a light rail line that started at the Martinez Amtrak station, then stopped in Vine Hill, Pacheco, Pleasant Hill, Contra Costa Centre, north Walnut Creek, south Walnut Creek, Alamo, Danville, north San Ramon, south San Ramon, Dublin, and Pleasanton, and ended in Livermore. Maybe the north end could even extend over the bridge to Benicia and Vallejo, since BART doesn't see fit to connect that far north.
It would do so much for the livability of this whole area.
@@teuast Oh no! Please don’t start with this! I’ve been fantasizing about this rail link since forever! I don’t need to go down that rabbit hole again!
There’s an old rail ROW that has been “railbanked” (what a scam that railbanking is!) that covers this exact route. And it was clear that we need this link since the beginning because BART had it on their “fantasy” maps from day one. In a sane Bay Area this would have already been built!
But we have all those wonderful NIMBYs that oppose electric rail on “environmental” grounds, so yeah… Good times!
This is so true! It can often feel like the design is for the downtrodden (or, those who can't own/drive a car). I think there's a kind of separatism and dehumanization that comes from car dependent infrastructure. Whenever I drive, it's so easy to think that all the other cars on the road are just obstacles rather than real people. Having ridden public transport more this past year, I've grown to appreciate the human aspect of it. Whenever I ride, I see real people and get to occasionally talk with them. You see a lot more walks of life.
I grew up in venice and Santa Monica, and absolutely loved this video, there are so many buildings you pointed out that I didn’t even realize were old transit stations. I really hope LA can be saved
I've pretty much never left the LA area my whole life except for a few short trips. The car based multi-nuclei geography of the city is definitely a challenge to overcome. It seems like every city in the county is just kinda doing it's own thing sometimes. I know the city is trying to improve transit before the Olympics in a few years, but even still it's going to be hard to change the fabric of places like the San Fernando Valley (which in itself has a greater population than Philadelphia and is extremely transit starved and decentralized). I think people here really want to do away with the car dependency, especially with things like parking requirement laws increasing housing prices, but it's gonna be a tough journey.
Decentralization of cities is the way to go actually, but maybe not what you think - for me (European) centralization means, that all companies/shops/... Are in one place that's usually considered the center of the city. This inherently creates some problems, because every mode of transportation reaches a limit at some point, and upgrading the systems can cost A LOT of money, that could also be spent otherwise (schools, health,...)
I think a lack of centralization isn't the problem of American cities, but density is. You can have several high density (walkable) zones throughout your city (thereby no central part), but because each of those zones is walkable, you alleviate a lot of traffic already.
If Los Angeles really does have many city centers as you claim it does, then can I recommend taking a leaf out of Tokyo's book?
@@jan-lukas Decentralization is exactly why we can't densify. Nimbys are opposed to density (for monetary, racist, classist reasons), and because things are controlled by the city governments their lobbying efforts against things they don't want work most of time. Hence why it is illegal to build dense mixed use development across the country despite it not being against state law or federal law.
Having more centralized planning can work out in different ways. Like zoning is centralized in Japan, but that just allowed people and developers to do what they want with way less push back. If I wanted to turn my single family home into a 6 story condo, there ain't nothing the neighbors couldn't stop me since you would have take it up with the feds. The same thing rings true for transit options. Nimbys don't want it, so we now have use centralized power to steamroll them.
Yeah, the San Fernando Valley is particularly tough. Didn't get there this time, but maybe next!
@@birdiewolf3497 Decentralized authority is certainly a problem (the problem, really, in LA), but what Jan was talking about is decentralized population distribution
LA viewer here, I’m actually moving to a new neighborhood soon solely because of my desire for more walkable living. I really dislike feeling so disconnected and yearn for more of a community-oriented environment. I hope we can work on making this a reality for more neighborhoods in LA! we have so much potential.
Which neighborhood did you go to? Did you end up liking it better?
OC viewer here, so happy to see the laguna hills mall (5:22) make an appearance in this video! This dead and ugly mall is currently being redeveloped into a massive mixed use retail, office, and housing project that will have 1500 apartments and become a center of walkability in an otherwise car hellscape. I drive by it to get to work and am so excited seeing it become something useful
Yeah I had to Google for awhile to find a mall that was obviously under redevelopment in satellite view!
I’m an LA viewer! I’ve never owned a car and I only travel by bike or train. It’s difficult at times but we’re definitely out there and we definitely feel the city fighting back every time I want to go somewhere. The only reason I’m even here is because our union is local only. I’m actually surprised there wasn’t as much crowds while you were here you must have surveyed the trains during San Diego comic con that’s usually when there’s less congestion. In my opinion the train system has a lot of work ahead not only in terms of accessibility or accessing such a stretched out city, but just the speed and frequency that carts come and go it’s about 18-25 minute waits especially the Redline. Some of its due to the construction but more than ever I feel the metro becoming less and less dependable than it’s ever been. Now whenever I go get my bike serviced in Pasadena- instead of taking the Redline> Union Station> Gold Line. I just bypass all the redline waiting and bike down the LaRiver headed to Chinatown and you can hop on the Lincoln/Cypress and immediately be on the Gold Line! I’d really love to see an LA be fully connected one day where one could access Glendale and Pasadena and more of West Hollywood area. It would be a great incentive for people when going out for drinks or not having to crowd the streets with more Ubers and cars. Hope to see you around these parts and thank you for your videos and hitting all the spots in LA transit!
Thanks for the comment! I'm excited about the rail expansions that are underway but yeah, it's still nowhere near enough!
You should make a YT channel about it. BTW: I wonder how much money you save that way!
LA viewer here. Culver City is our primary hub these days. The progress in LA is slower than we want, but it's noticeably better in the 10 years we've lived here.
I live in LA and am very passionate about the urbanism past, present, and future. Wish you got to experience the LA River and the urbanism (or lack thereof) around it. I try to bike as often as I can to my destinations (I'm in Highland Park), but the car is still king and bike lanes will often unceremoniously end and dump you dangerously in the middle of traffic with no direction of where to go. We need more bike infrastructure and more importantly a network of it, so people can use it to get places. The LA River path is a great example of a separated bike path, but the connections to/from it are really horrible. It should be a backbone of a more bikeable LA.
Is the LA River bike path still overrun by homeless encampments?
@@danieldaniels7571 Pretty much all of LA is now, even out in Sherman Oaks. They are moving in the wrong direction.
@@sleddy01 that's what I thought. It's a dirty reality of non-car infastructure and separated bike paths that urbanist videos like to pretend doesn't exist. It's not as bad where I live in Phoenix as what I've seen in LA, but still an issue.
LA native here and I love your videos. I really LA brings back a sort of streetcar system. Hope LA Metro can build up also the new Crenshaw line just opened I seen a picture of the same street 100 years apart from 1922 to 2022 good to know there's a rail line serving the community again
I could see this kind of video becoming a "Rate My City" format in which you evaluate the city of a commenter, subscriber, patron, etc. and point out what it's doing well and what it's not in terms of urbanism. I know that I personally have a lot of passion about this topic but often don't know how to translate that into actual suggestions for improving my own city, and I suspect that other people are the same way. A more focused look at a single city might help us/me learn how to do that better.
I've lived in LA for 5 years, been in West Hollywood for the last year or so, and haven't had a car since last December. It's super walkable where I live (multiple grocery stores, couple pet stores, restaurants and bars, couple movie theaters, etc), but it can be a pain to get to certain areas (i.e. the Valley). One thing to bring up is the bus system, which is pretty great. They're typically clean and the Transit app works great with up to date info on bus arrivals. Compared to cars, you do need to account for longer trips but not having to deal with the stress of driving in traffic makes it worth it in my opinion.
LA (Torrance) viewer here. I started watching *because* I recently moved here and was shocked at how bad the urban planning was, and wanted to learn more about how it could be better.
I live in Culver City and the build out of the Metro allows our household to have 1 car instead of 2. We use it as much as possible, and hope to eventually get rid of our car completely! LA is a great city for public transit - our weather also means you can comfortably take it year round. The old adage of "nobody walks in LA" is becoming less true all the time!
Yeah, there was a lot more walking and biking than I expected to see!
Hi!👋🏼 LA person here and I love your videos!
I live in LA! Great job covering the city. It's hard to explain the makeup of LA but what you showed encapsulates it well!
LA viewer here!. Your content is much appreciated!
Grew up in Glendale, watching now from Northern Virginia! For as much as LA relies on freeways for everything, it still feels more walkable than all of NoVa besides Arlington/Alexandria along the metro lines. Weather definitely plays a part but I'd mostly attribute it to the aggregation of varied retail spaces along the former electric railway streets you identified. DC has some areas that are nicer to walk around than a Brand Blvd or Colorado Blvd, like M St in Georgetown and 14th St, but even while they have fewer lanes, they can often be harder to traverse (e.g. no protected bike lanes, small sidewalks). Plus, LA just has a lot more of these retail-heavy corridors, even if they are diluted with parking lots. All that said I do *not* miss the long drives to the nearest metro station in LA.
I'm glad you showed how LA really was built for trains, and then slowly degraded for cars from the 1950s until almost present day when things started to slowly come back to its roots. I think a lot of people think LA is completely unwalkable, but that's not true. Its no Chicago or New York but its way better than most of its peer cities.
The Pasadena gold line is one of the most scenic light rail lines I've taken btw, the trip from DTLA to Pasadena through the old streetcar suburbs in the foothills is a real treat, even if the stretch through Highland Park is painfully slow.
Watching from Pasadena. I think you're right that there are some good bones, though it can feel somewhat hopeless living here. The traffic makes walking a loud and smelly experience. They reduced the lanes in Old Town/Collorado Blvd during the pandemic and I thought it made the area more pleasant. If only they kept it or made it a pedestrian only zone...
The city of Pasadena has been trying to build up more protected bike lanes and improve walkability, but resistance from car culture folks is high. Personally I walk around town a lot, but biking is too dangerous for where I want to go.
Culver City resident here and very passionate about urbanism. I did spend 10 years in SF prior to here which probably shaped my views. CC is doing it right!
LA resident and huge urbanism nerd here! 🙋♂️
Gave up my car almost 10 years ago (yes, it’s possible), and the city has a growing urbanism movement (mostly among millennials and younger).
LA based viewer here. Well done. I live in Venice because, you guessed it, walkability.
Another LA viewer and follower here in DTLA. Thanks for the video and really interesting to trace the current most walkable corridors to the original transit network but I suppose it makes sense. There is certainly progress being made overall from an urbanism standpoint and a bit of a revival of urban living. I, for one, look forward to the opening of the regional connector which will help improve trip length and minimize transfers while especially serving us well here in Little Tokyo/Arts District.
Greater LA viewer here! I live in a streetcar suburb called Alamitos Beach in the City of Long Beach. It's delightful. We have a superb mix of housing types, including many charming fourplexes. The streetcar that ran through the center of the neighborhood no longer exists, but its street now has a very useful cycletrack that provides a quick and fun way to reach Downtown Long Beach.
I live in LA. People here don’t much think about urbanism. They think more about their careers and the weather. You go East for the culture. You go West for the weather. Public transit here is kind of seen as a dirty necessity for poor people. I rode a motorcycle here because I didn’t like being stuck in traffic. I got hit by a car in January and am still rehabilitating, so I take public transit exclusively. You can get pretty much everywhere in LA on transit between the buses and trains. It just takes about 2x as long and most every public transit shuts down just before midnight. Plus, there can be some walking and people in LA hate to walk unless they are hiking. I’ve been stuck downtown at 11:30pm before. Don’t look vulnerable.
LA based viewer here :) thanks for making such informative content. so inspiring to see what once was and what it could be!
LA resident here. Really enjoyed the deep-dive and exploring the streetcar's legacy. I was initially intrigued after moving here years back when I'd see streets which "didn't make sense" in terms of their structure and orientation (the massive medians in streets like San Vicente or the two parallel Santa Monica Blvds in Beverly Hills with a very particular treatment of the land in between them and how you see an almost identical structure in Santa Monica between Main St and Neilson Way). I've gone down some fascinating rabbit holes as a result researching the streetcar system on how they shaped the city. Really great insight you've provided.
Long Beach CA person here and man, I gotta say it’s been a REALLY long time since I’ve visited many of those areas, Culver City , Venice. We’re so spoiled for choice here in LB and since it takes 45 mins to travel 20 mins on the freeways, I roll my eyes at the thought of it. Thanks for the video lot of good footage!
re: The Olive Substation. I’ve passed by that building hundreds of times while walking my dog, and always thought it was unique looking, but had no idea what it was until watching this video. So, thank you for the education!
And yes. Los Angeles based viewer here. Love your channel!
LA transit nerd here, this was beyond what I ever expected to see on this channel to make me feel seen. Live right on the expo line at la brea and I ride metro, metrolink, and amtrak all over. I also bike but it's not quite as popular as I hope it would be! Can't wait to see what the remainder of measure M does for the metro area
I'm not a regular viewer, I was brought here after rewatching a Not Just Bikes video. I'm from LA, I'll probably always love my car but I want to see better transit wherever it's possible. It would be great to have an option like I did when living in Boston. Thanks for making the video!
I notice that most/all of these areas already had decent transit either past or present. Do you think there's any future in redeveloping car-dependent suburbia that's relatively close to potential rail corridors? I feel like with streets being pretty immutable, the exclusionairy street layouts with lots of dead ends and very few connections both between neighborhoods and to the main thoroughfares look like they pose quite a challenge.
Thankfully the areas CityNerd talked about in the video are on a grid and don't have Florida's problem of cul-de-sacs literally everywhere. LA, the cities in the SoCal, and/or LA county could work with NGOs to develop affordable housing or create a corporation that directly hires construction workers to build affordable housing near transit, both present and future.
The trick for cul-de-sacs is to make them into bike/ped shortcuts by just extending multiuse paths from the end of 1 to the next road. This makes a sort of squiggly grid for quiet bikes & pedestrians (well some people talk loudly), but keeps the very hostile to car travel layout that was the origin of cul-de-sac nonsense in the first place. You would then need to place transit connections in such a way as to be a convient distance by bike/foot using the shortcut network for as much of the area as possible while minimizing bulldozing of existing houses. (Because thats expensive and unpopular)
The key to excellent transit is having a large network where each mode feeds the others. Just look at the road network to understand this, parking spaces, small roads, large arterials, and highways feed eachother seemlessly so its effortless to have your GPS find an easy route from Maine to California if you want to drive it. Doing the same with transit would be a nightmare in the US right now. (Excluding flying as a form of transit, which i doubt anyone thinks it is)
I might have to do a trip to Vancouver to help answer this question!
Most of LA, even the suburban areas are built on a grid. Very few cul de sacs unlike places like Texas.
@@jasonreed7522 culs-de-sacs point to an interesting conundrum of wanting traffic calming in one's own neighborhood but unimpeded travel elsewhere
I've just discovered and subscribed to City Nerd Yes, Virginia there are LA viewers that place a very high priority on urbanism. Your view on how LA's defunct Red and Yellow cars could be SoCal's salvation was truly insightful and really well done. For generations DTLA was vacated after work hours and essentially became a ghost town. .But one positive of this neglect is that most of its legacy buildings were never demolished. Combine that with all the new development taking place in DTLA and LA is definitely becoming more and more salvageable. I'm up for any objective criticism of Los Angeles and I liked how you actually referred to its inhabitants as Angelinos. Thank you. Job well done. Keep up the good work.
NJB brought me here, and I'm excited to join your community of subscribers! As an Angeleno born and raised in Echo Park, one of the neighborhoods you highlighted, I have vivid childhood memories of remnants of the old streetcar tracks (of course not the streetcar). My bike tire once slipped on a section of metal streetcar track in front of Angelus Temple/Echo Park Lake, just down the street of the shot at 8:31 lol
I can't help but think of urban development and gentrification in streetcar-connected areas, a topic that I believe deserves more attention in urbanist circles. In their prime, neighborhoods like Echo Park and nearby MacArthur Park/Westlake were among the most desirable in a less car-centric LA. However, following the decline of the streetcar system, these areas faced years of disinvestment and neglect. They became havens for low-income, working-class brown immigrant families, providing a sense of home despite the challenges.
In recent times, the influx of new investments and residents into Echo Park has profoundly altered its character and demographic makeup. While there are benefits to this revitalization, it's impossible to overlook its impact on the longstanding brown communities. The rapid gentrification and displacement of these families have drastically changed the cultural landscape and community dynamics. The new curbside charm and trendy establishments, while appealing, overshadow the reality that such development often came at the expense of those who had little means to influence their neighborhood's transformation. It's a bittersweet reflection on how revitalization sometimes happens without the participation of long-established community members.
This transformation in Echo Park represents more than just physical redevelopment. It's a story about the people and cultures disproportionately affected by these changes. It emphasizes the need for development strategies that respect and preserve the unique history and culture of neighborhoods while protecting and including the communities that have long been part of their fabric.
As we consider revitalizing these neighborhoods with improved transit options, it's essential to tread carefully to avoid what's known as 'green gentrification.' The challenge lies in making sure that such developments are inclusive and equitable, maintaining the community's soul while adapting to modern needs. This includes addressing the specific impacts of gentrification on brown communities and understanding the nuances of these complex urban challenges.
Your mention of Culver City as 'antiseptic and upscale' resonates with my feelings about many of the areas you discussed. Larchmont, Santa Monica, Venice, Abbott Kinney, Highland Park, Pasadena, and Echo Park have all undergone significant changes, becoming more upscale and less diverse than in the past.
Your video kickstarts an important conversation about the intersection of historical urban policies and their contemporary impacts on diverse communities. It's crucial to continue exploring these stories to fully grasp and address the challenges of urban development and gentrification in our cities.
Angeleno checking in. Yes we care about urbanism- we desperately need it- and we even watch youtube. Great video! We realized that many of the places we like to hang out all have the street car in common.
Have been only riding a bike in LA for 21 years.. It has a lot of potential!
I moved to as an adult 20 years ago, and thankfully searched for and found a walking neighborhood to settle in. They do exist! love your channel, I'm car-light and use my bicycle and walking unless I absolutely need to drive. I am o e of those LA people who want more alternatives to cars!
Not an LA viewer, but I love learning about the history of LA and why it is the way it is. I would love more series like this about other cities!
Not an LA viewer, but I did grow up there. I knew that LA used to have a streetcar network, but I never put it together that all my favorite neighborhoods were streetcar suburbs!
LA viewer here! Thanks for the video. all i want is for LA to be more walkable and accessible
LA resident, I am a user of LA Public transit. Mostly the subway/ light rail. I am lucky in that I have a stop that is a 5-10 minute walk. I work downtown and love it that I don’t have to drive. In about a year I will be able to connect to LAX directly which is great for me as I fly out about twice a month. I only wish that LA would build faster rail and start building more connections. Eventually we will need to start adding express lines which will help build ridership so that it can compete will using cars. That is the only way we can start moving people to look to transit as an option to cars.
LA viewer here. You showed my neighborhood! I enjoyed your overview and looks at street atmosphere in the old red car and yellow car lines. I would have loved to see some views of streets during the pacific electric heyday with comparisons to present day LA as the ghosts of old LA slowly fade away
LA area (Long Beach) viewer here. We have many urbanists in the area and would love to see more walkable cities. Great video!
I was born and raised in Los Angeles, I grew up throughout East Hollywood, silver lake, echo park, highland park, studio city, Los feliz, Glendale, and Pasadena. The expansion of the light rail and metro line system is impressive and really awesome that it now reaches to Santa Monica via expo line. However, my family and I stopped taking public transit bc of all the homeless junkies that have infested the metro system. It is literally an open air drug asylum w ppl shooting up needles, smoking meth, and defecating on seats. It is a really sad situation to see the public metro system become a public failure.
Born and raised in greater LA. I use a car when I stay in my area because the transport is not too good (Pomona Valley) - however I use public transit whenever I go into LA proper (usually once a week). It has defiantly gotten better- especially as the Olympics are coming with new metro rail lines.
I'm an LAer without a car living in Echo Park. Proud to see the neighborhood on here! You're right it's one of the more walkable and better designed in the city. Kinda feels like Brooklyn with palm trees. Mostly I bike everywhere, and maybe I'm crazy, but it's not a bad bike city if you're not afraid of biking next to cars. Mostly flat, weather's always nice, drivers are (mostly) considerate, and if I'm feeling lazy it's easy enough to combine bike with subway to get wherever I need to go in the same time or less as it would take to drive (especially counting time saved looking for a parking space). Still, I watch this channel because it's nice to dream of what could be. Or maybe I just like getting depressed about the way things are. Either way, thanks!
Watching from LA, realizing all my favorite places in the city are literally right on the old red and yellow lines. Blew my mind seeing some familiar buildings and realizing they're the old transfer stations!
I live in SD but I love taking trips to LA. There's so many charming areas if you look for them. Recently I visited Montrose and Descanso gardens. It was amazing.
LA viewer here. I didn't realize the old streetcars left such a lasting legacy on urban design. I knew there was a reason certain areas feel more walkable.
If one didn't grow up in Los Angeles in the 1940s and 50s, it's impossible to appreciate how much quality of life has been lost since then. The points made in this video about the effect of car culture on street life is certainly true. But it goes far beyond that impact. Sixty years ago L.A. drivers were not aggressive, overtly hostile to anyone who delayed them, self-entitled to risk the lives of others and their own to get where they want to go at all costs. The transformation from public transportation to millions of closed, individual automobiles, seemingly has elevated the importance of the individual over the public good, which plays out in myriad destructive ways.
I'm an Angeleno, an occasional viewer of your channel (now subscribed) and watch plenty of TH-cam generally. I found this video fascinating and educational. I have lived in LA for 15 years, and your video was the first time I've heard anybody point out that all the good neighborhoods were built around street cars during that era. It was a lightbulb moment for me. Please keep up the good work!
Thanks for the insightful video. I lived in LA (Venice?Marina/Santa Monica mostly) for 36 years but have recently moved to Auckland, New Zealand. The transit challenges are very similar. The potential is there in both cities. It just takes a lot of time and money.
LA area viewer here! I’m down in Long Beach and have chosen to stay in LB due to my neighborhoods great walkability and a large portion of Long Beach being walkable. Any neighborhoods I would live in LA that are walkable have become so expensive I could never afford it. I have come to love so many of the little communities in the greater LA area, many that offer a much more walkable neighborhood than LA!
I never thought I would see some of my favorite bands mentioned in an urban planning video. Hell yeah!
LA subscriber! Born and raised in south east LA and for a while bro I used to live in Santa Monica and work on main st in Venice for a couple years until the shut down happened and things got really bad around us so we left 1.5 years ago and are now in South East LA again. We are saving up to move out, an😊d have visited some of our options like Boise, Seattle, Portland, flagstaff, Prescott, phoenix, Sedona, and most of central and Northern California. We are now thinking of visiting Reno because we still haven’t found somewhere we are excited about. Thinking the the biggest little city might be our spot. Enjoying your videos and learning a lot 🥂
This is your best video yet. I get a bit frustrated when people describe LA as the epitome of a post-war, Sunbelt city. Having lived in LA and spent some time in Dallas, I can tell you that LA is NOT Dallas (or Houston, or Atlanta, whatever). It's not New York, either (or even San Francisco), but it's not what a lot of urbanists imagine it to be.
LA viewer! Thank you for making the connection between the former streetcars and desirable neighborhoods! I’d never thought about that 🤔
LA viewer raised in SF, pining for more pedestrian friendly neighborhoods and less car reliance. I miss enjoying the journey of moving through a city, rather than just wanting to get it over with.
LA-based here! We watch because we're tired of driving in traffic, and we want these fixes the most!
This video reminded me that as a kid I asked my uncle about the rails in our streets in Richmond Va. He told me we don't have a streetcar no more. I looked up the old streetcars service in RVa that started back in 1888. Streetcars would be better than the pulse bus!
LA-based viewer here! Would love to see more of an exploration of northeast LA!
I am an Angeleno for nearly 20 years now. I have lived downtown for the past several years, and my ability to get most places without a car in a reasonable amount of time has skyrocketed in that time. The LA Metro regional connector -- which broke the Gold Line in two, merging one end with the Expo Line (so you can go from Santa Monica to East LA) and the other with the Blue Line (so you can go from Long Beach to Azusa) -- has made it much, much easier for me to get just about anywhere I need to go. I can even take my kid to daycare on it.
Granted! I live downtown, not far from both Seventh Street Metro and Union Station, the two Metro hubs for the whole region. But there are whole weeks that pass when I don't use my car, and I think the city is moving in the right direction, especially if you don't mind walking or biking (and I don't).
There's still way too much sprawl.
LA Viewer here. Grew up in the East SF Valley - No/Ho. It's one of several communities where the freeway cut up and divided the city. I'd love a street car that just went straight along Victory Blvd the full length of the valley.
I'm an LA based viewer! Thanks for making such informative content.
As a native Angeleno, I appreciate the optimism presented. I hope the 2028 Olympics brings enough energy to help the current public transportation infrastructure to fruition but time will only tell. Lastly, u briefly mentioned Germany. Having recently come back from Berlin, the walkability factor is amazing. The loop was a game changer in enjoying that amazing city. Looking forward to watch more of your content. Thanks!
Big fans of City Nerd, my husband and I. We lived in Philly for many years before moving to Los Angeles. Great climate and we did find a decently walkable neighborhood (near 3rd and LaBrea). After twenty years in Los Angeles, the adventure has worn off. May Days in this city are among the great worker festivals, so that's good. Wonderful mix of cultures and languages here. But as we age, this city gets tougher. Also, the political climate of this country grows ominous. Again. Both of us lived in other countries in our early years, so we might become seasonal expatriates.
I'm not from nor live in LA but that was an amazing condensed introduction of the history that you included in the video.
It's quite charming to listen to you trying to pronounce LA's unique mixture of Spanish and English place names.
As a LA resident, we do have lots of transit folks that are working hard on the LRT, BRT and Active transportation.. But I think trams and streetcars have to be the next frontier. Good video!
Another LA viewer here. As a kid I had to be driven everywhere but when the expo line opened I would take it to Santa Monica College and one summer to DTLA for an internship. I would also take the bus up to Hollywood to go see concerts. Some of the best times I"ve had in the city have been with just going around with a tap card.
When I lived in Echo Park 20 years ago there was an attempt to revive the street-car line (guess it was a cable car as there was an open-top groove in the road that the car was centered over) that ran up Echo Park Avenue from the lake to somewhere north of Fargo - the old power station is still there and used by whatever the bus system is now - it was RTD I think. The group had located the original cable car that was used on the line in the 1940s and it was sitting in someone's backyard in Echo Park. When the group was told that it would cost over $100k to just refurbish the car - never mind install all the systems required to operate the line - the enthusiasm for the line dwindled.
LA viewer here! Now in the San Gabriel Valley (Alhambra), but recently moved from the Palms/Culver City area. It was amazing to see downtown Culver City transform with the new street designs and bike lanes/bus lanes.
One thing that is interesting about the LA metro area is how weather plays an impact on walkability. Palms/Culver City are both very dense and walkable, which is helped a lot by the very temperate weather. I live close to downtown Alhambra/Main Street, but since it's 10-15 degrees hotter than the Westside, it is much more difficult to walk places between the hours of, say, 11am-6pm in the summer. Of course, we don't have real winters, so maybe I'm just nitpicking...
Los Angeles reporting for duty!
I’m a former clerk for the LA City Council. Two of my committees were Planning and Transportation.
LA is improving its urban appeal. But, the convenience of mass transit is frustrated by slow connection service - and by vehicular traffic
With all due respect, Mr. Nerd, a huge amount of your audience lives in LA. You have it backwards, everyone in LA stays inside and rarely goes out. Do you see many people walking around where you're filming? Everyone stays indoors and only goes out if they absolutely have to and always in their cars.
With just a few exceptions there is almost no public space in LA. No parks, no city squares, no plazas. It's just 7 lane stroads with struggling businesses and single family houses everywhere else. They basically took the best climate region in the US and paved it over so nobody could enjoy it. It's miserable and depressing here, and there needs to be some drastic actions for that to change.
That describes a lot of America, LA seems to be just a little off the mark (for better or worse) from most of suburbia.
this was great! More videos like this would be greatly appreciated
LA native and avid City Nerd viewer here. I am a firm supporter of multimodalism. There are dozens of us!
I lived in LA my entire life, 33 years, not that long but not that short. Lived in Riverside, South Pasadena and now the West Side and mostly Santa Monica. Excellent video and I love your channel, I watch all the time, mostly dreaming of moving to more liveable citites and nerding out on transit with you. My favorite part of LA is actually Arts District, not sure if that was a rail-line corridor or not but it's got a bunch of old buildings and factories, re-purposed into bars and restaurants with cool murals here and there. There's all sorts of venues and weird spots hidden around and Little Tokyo is just a short walk away and can be fun too. Culver City is decent now too thanks for doing it justice. Side note: I would really love to see a video on Austrailia's transit system, seems like such a high standard of living there, and the transit looks decent, but I've heard it has it's shortcomings and peculiarities.
I've lived in Pasadena and Whittier though I'm now midwest based. There was a lot to love about both areas though the traffic and housing prices is what motivated me to relocate. It's interesting to see the infrastructure develop and there was so much I loved about LA generally, I'm not opposed to moving back at some point. I also grew up at an of the old terminus of the Orange County Pacific Electric lines and constantly bemoaned the loss.
Born and raised in LA metro- love to learn this history!
Hey I'm a recent transplant to the east LA area. Having grown up in Portland, OR and moving more directly from 8 years in Montreal, not gonna lie it's been a rough transition. I'm mourning the loss of a comprehensive metro (particularly as I write this on holiday in Paris) and safe bike lanes, hell my best friend just got hit by a car biking in Culver city and it makes me even more apprehensive to try. The metro from my home to the beach takes over an hour-thirty because these trains move so damn slow (and it's all so far). The second day I was here I bought my first car and it has been essential to everything I've done since. Here's hoping the new job, pay bump, music scene, and food makes up for it. If nothing else, it's encouraging to see some progress being made in a lot of areas or at least talked about finally. And theres still high speed rail to look forward to... eventually. Thanks for the recommendations of cool neighbourhood streets to check out! :D
LA (Pasadena) viewer. This video showed two buildings I used to work at and even the grocery store I shopped at for years. Pasadena usually doesn’t get this kind of attention in videos.
This video really demonstrates how LA has some amazing walkable neighborhoods . . . you just have to drive to them.
One of my hobbies is visiting sports venues around the country. The more arenas and stadiums I visit, the more apparent the lack of transit near Dodgers Stadium becomes.
I’m an LA viewer! But I am probably an outlier as I’m from the east coast and only moved here for work. I watch your channel as equal parts indignation at the lack of good planning in my own city and straight up escapist fantasy. If I could live somewhere else, I would.
I'm from LA, love your channel
LA viewer here. I think this city has the potential to be the greatest in the world if they built more rail
I live in LA. County, actually. Glendora. It's about 25 miles east of downtown LA. I was a long time bicycle commuter in other cities. I guess that's why your channel is of interest to me.
I'm out here. I was born in So Cal. Many generations of my family are here. That is why I'm here.
I'm originally from the SGV near some of the areas you highlighted. To answer your question, it's a combination of culture, driving everywhere (little time for TH-cam videos), and that there's so much to do. You must actively try to be bored anywhere in the coastal metro areas of SoCal, unlike where I live now that is incredibly boring unless you are into drinking, sports, or fighting for a parking spot at a trailhead. Younger people in SoCal have been using a mix of private and public transit for decades since the region has neighborhoods that are distinctly car-oriented and transit/walking-oriented (where I live now, in the Seattle metro, we have this but there is only one area you always visit using transit). For example, when I lived in San Diego, I'd catch a trolley if I was headed to anything at the stadium, in downtown, or for a flight, but I'd drive to nearby suburban malls, strip malls, and my office.
I'm in LA. I don't own a car. I cycle most places and find the gold, red and blue lines helpful, but they only take me to a few places. Would love to see more investment in future lines and the outright removal of car traffic and parking in these neighborhood centers.
I'm a big critic of American urban design and zoning and LA is a tough place to live for me. I see some potential, but i fear change is going to slow for me to stick it out.
Just discovered your channel. Thanks for the video.
5 year LA resident! and this is a great video. just subscribed
I'm in Orange county, so not quite LA. We're making improvements here with the installation of the street cars in Santa Ana-Garden Grove
Thank you for using Glendale as one of your examples. We have a solid urban layout, but we desperately need Metro rail service.
LA viewer here as well. Great job
Yoohoo! I'm out here in LA! Huge fan of the dry humor. So glad you featured LA. I have a car but try to walk, ride my OneWheel or use public transit. The problem with public transit is that most trips take 4-10 times longer than driving.
Most people generally turn to the western region of LA county when looking for walkable communities, but people need to realize there are also extremely promising walkable communities appearing to the east too! Notably, Artesia and Fullerton.
In the past few years, Artesia has made some incredibly promising progress. Due to the city's grid-like design, it had already been an extremely compact and walkable community for decades. However, recently, it has created an extensive network of painted bike lanes and has revived its downtown by widening its sidewalks and planting trees. Its downtown is lined with small businesses that bustle with life, and every night, you can see people on the streets frequenting stores and eating at restaurants outside. Additionally, it has launched an all-electric bus fleet and is also scheduled to be connected to DTLA by the West Santa Ana Branch light rail. So exciting!
Meanwhile, in Orange County, Fullerton has preserved its compact downtown, and like Artesia, you can see people eating at restaurants, frequenting stores, and walking on the tree-lined streets. Additionally, the downtown is located right next to a MetroLink station.
Other communities nearby have also been creating urban environments, such as Brea, and I hope that these communities can also get recognition for the amazing work they've been doing too!
born and raised in LA ! love it here but man it is crazy how many cars there r