"Picture Los Angeles today, and most people summon up images of cars and freeways. But if you talk to people of a certain age who grew up in Los Angeles, and mention the words "red cars", you will hear about a time before the freeways, when a network of rail lines and electric streetcars connected L.A., Orange, Ventura, San Bernardino and Riverside counties. They reached their peak in popularity in the 1920s, and then slowly fell victim to Angelinos' love of their automobiles- (Red Cars 1). High-speed rights-of-way contrasted with slow street running sections. During its forty-two year life as a passenger carrier, the Pacific Electric was not a financial success, and sadly never had the money to reinvest back into those very many line and rolling stock improvements, which would have been needed for real rapid transit. "Even as the 1920's roared on, the era of private Capital faded away- (Sechler 1). Although the period of the great merger and the "red cars- didn't produce a long lasting successful form of mass transit it did spawn the ideas that would eventually create the second era, the "Grand Design."" .
In 1911, at the start of the "great merger,"" the public sponsored studies of rapid transit in the Los Angeles area. A consultant from Chicago by the name of Bion J. Arnold was one the main producer in these studies. "Arnold prepared a report to the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners, in which he recommended several transportation improvements. Chief among the recommendations was a complete system of downtown subways for interurban trains. However, the outstanding feature of the Arnold report must have boggled the contemporary imagination. He proposed, in a corridor paralleling the shoestring annexation strip to San Pedro, eight railroad tracks flanked by grade-separated roads, to be known as the "auto speedway"- (Sechler 1). Although his proposal was a little ahead of his time, eventually his idea would become a transportation dream, the Harbor Freeway and the Alameda Corridor Project.
