In Search of Walkable L.A.: How Defunct Electric Railways Could be Southern California's Salvation

LA has the weather to be the most walkable place in the country, such a bummer we lost the streetcar network!

I just moved to LA from boston, and what I can say, is that this city is definitely fighting back in favor of urbanism. You see a lot more advocate groups for urbanism, yimbyism and bike lanes than you do in a lot of other cities. I could totally see this place becoming a great walkable city!

The City of Boise closed down a dense section of 8th Street to all motor vehicles during COVID, and now has decided to keep the street closed to vehicles permanently and repurpose the street to only pedestrians and bicycles. It's become very popular and is a very nice addition to the downtown.

I’m not an Angelino, but I am a San Diegan and I think I speak for many when I say that I did not understand for the better part of my life (I’m in my 50’s) that car-centered city planning is not only not the ideal but damaging to communities. So channels like this and Not Just Bikes and City Beautiful and Armchair Urbanist have really helped open my eyes to the possibilities of human-centered public spaces. Southern California does have a long way to go, but many cities are making sincere efforts to move in the right direction. The San Diego Trolly just opened a grade-separated extension that connects the University of California San Diego to Downtown and bicycle infrastructure is going from minuscule to something-more-than-minuscule. Come on down and take a look sometime! Thank you for the great content!

LA viewer here! I definitely think this city has a lot of potential to be a great urbanist city. One aspect that could greatly help is improving the bike network. In spite of how incoherent and frankly dangerous the current infrastructure is, I see so many people biking around here, which tells me the demand is there.

I imagine an LA covered in trees with walkable roads. And no more 10 lane highways.

los angeles was the first american home for me and my parents when we immigrated here 22 years ago - i've had the fortune to live in and visit many many cities since then, some of which (copenhagen, washington dc, beijing) are holy grails in the urban planning canon...but los angeles has drawn me back and kept me here. i could be moved to tears sometimes when i catch a whiff of a taco stand that i'm passing by or when i can navigate by my own mind alone the neighborhoods that have cradled me... los angeles is beautiful in ways that transcend the planning decisions of an uninformed, malicious, and parochial oligarchy. it's a city that is insistently made by the people that live in it -- always in spirit even if not in physical form -- and as such there is a teeming community of people who are fighting every day to create the physical (and political) forms that resonate with the visions of livability they're already holding in their souls. i'm here practicing urban resilience not because los angeles is already a shining example of it but precisely because there's still so much we need to build together.

Life-long Angeleno here. I love my city and all that it has offered me in my life, but I am now leaving in search of better urban living elsewhere. I recognize the biggest problems for urbanism in Los Angeles as being corruption, inflated construction costs for municipal works, and ignorance of the city’s history. I appreciate your channel very much, it is a wonderful educational resource to people everywhere.

The population density in LA isn't too bad, despite how massive and sprawling the region is. Several times the population density of, say, Phoenix. The biggest thing for me is that as you mentioned in this video, almost every street is too wide. They could, and probably should, put protected bike lanes and/or bus rapid transit on just about every major arterial while maintaining car access in both directions. Also, personal pet peeve, get rid of the palm trees and put in real shade trees! At least in the inland areas.

LA native here, great video and channel. There's something to be said about the fact that these kinds of neighborhoods are almost always more expensive to live in than other areas in the city. Gee, it's almost as if people actually WANT walkable neighborhoods with character and decent transit availability. Yet somehow the overwhelmingly dominant urban form in the US is still car centric sprawl. Unfortunately contemporary zoning laws don't actually allow supply and demand to play out and allow us to have the cities we actually want to live in. Hopefully that's starting to change more broadly.

I'm an LA resident (currently living in Koreatown, previously lived in North Hollywood, Studio City, and Westwood) who doesn't own a car, so I get around the city via public transit and ride share apps. I've been wanting to learn more about the history of Los Angeles' electric rail system and urbanism in general, so I'm glad the YouTube algorithm recommended this video to me.  Public transit and walkability in LA is definitely challenging, especially when you need to traverse the city to get somewhere, but I agree that there are a lot of communities within the city proper that feel very walkable once you're there. I'm hopeful that the city will continue to develop transit that connects different areas of the city to reduce traffic and pollution and to make it easier to explore the city without a car. Thank you for the informative content - you've earned a new subscriber!

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!

I'm a viewer in LA. I'm huge advocate for the expansion of the light rail out here.

I'm so old that I actually remember a lot of what you are describing about LARY and PERY. As a kid I often rode the red and yellow cars and later sadly saw that infamous stack of junked red cars in person. Small correction though. The route of the Gold Line through So. Pasadena and Pasadena was the route of the mainline Santa Fe not the Pacific Electric. In the early 60s I was the only regular commuter on Santa Fe's Chicago Bound Chief passenger train, riding from Downtown L.A. to Pasadena. Porters loved to call out "Pasadena, Pasadena, all off for Pasadena." Since most passengers were going to Chicago and half of them would be getting on in Pasadena, they were pretty surprised to see me get up and off. The hand-written ticket was 27¢.

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

Thank you for connecting the historical dots in a way I had never quite recognized. As an LA-area native in SF, I'm so proud of Angelenos for taxing themselves to build transit. LA has a capacity for change that's sometimes under-appreciated. Many, many neighborhoods feel much more vital now than they did when I left in the late 1980s.

LA viewer here, I think it is a popular punching bag for the urban layout but I would also point out (1) LA has a much larger area than the more "urbanist" cities in the US and if you isolate it to the older city limits (i.e. downtown, south side, Hollywood) it's more on par with a more walkable/public transit oriented city and (2) while not great, LA is still like Manhattan compared to other sunbelt cities in Texas, Phoenix, San Diego, and most southeastern cities.

Just discovered your channel this morning with the Stroad V Stroad vid… and then this beauty on L.A. I’m a 48yo native Angeleno, and can verify that I can get down with the nerdiest when it comes to urban planning YT channels. Greater LA has everything anyone would ever want to examine when it comes to urban planning. While we are really a collection of many, many individual cities, the fact that our county shared the same namesake gives us a sense of one giant horribly beautiful communitropolis. We need to reimagine 80% of this city’s pedestro-friendliness, but the potential is there! Thanks for the love!

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.

LA suburbanite here! Although I’m currently on the East Coast for college, my heart and passion is still at home!! Growing up with a dad who used the suburban Metrolink commuter train, it makes me really happy to see the general expansion of Metro and rebirth of LA. IMO it’s still the best city in the world in terms of opportunity, diversity, and livability (barring current CoL problems…) Can’t wait to see how Greater LA continues to grow and learn into more sustainable and equitable urbanism~