![]() ![]() As the systems started losing money, city leaders and voters directed public funding to improving automobile infrastructure, instead of the rail system. Ultimately these changes would doom the rail system, as the streetcars were slower and less convenient than private automobiles. The 1920s brought two important changes to Southern California: private automobiles became more affordable and were being purchased en masse and the region saw enormous population growth. None of the other subway tunnels ever came to fruition. The western tunnel or "Vineyard Subway" was never built, but in 1917, Arthur Letts and other business leaders formed a "Subway Rapid Transit Association" and spent $3.5 million ($74 million in 2021 adjusted for inflation) to buy a partial right-of-way for one through the Wilshire Center area. The Subway Terminal Building was built as its downtown terminus, and envisioned as the hub of a much more extensive subway system. The northern tunnel was built and opened in 1925 as the “ Hollywood Subway” (officially the Belmont Tunnel) through which the Glendale–Burbank, Hollywood and Valley Red Car lines ran. The proposed system was further worked out in a comprehensive transit plan by Kelker, DeLeuw & Co. In 1923, the city proposed a large central subway station under Pershing Square, to be the hub of what a system with tunnels to the north, west, south and east, thus removing all Red Cars (but not the intra-city Yellow Cars) from downtown streets. Tunnels would connect Downtown in two directions: north to Glendale and Burbank, Hollywood, and the San Fernando Valley and west to Vineyard Junction from where trains continued to Santa Monica on one line, and to Venice and Redondo Beach on the other. : 29 By 1917, city leaders started discussing the need for a system of subway tunnels for the Red Cars to use under and around downtown. In Downtown Los Angeles, train cars operated in the middle of city streets, and their frequent stops and crossings created traffic jams with increasing automobile traffic. Many of these routes were constructed by real estate developers looking to lure people into their " streetcar suburbs." In the first half of the 20th century, Southern California had an extensive privately owned rail transit network with over 1,200 miles (1,900 km) of track at its peak, used by the interurban cars of the Pacific Electric (“Red Cars”) and streetcars of the Los Angeles Railway (“Yellow Cars”). Red cars at the Pacific Electric Building, c. ![]()
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