Car Industry Affected Los Angeles Case Study

How Has the Car Industry Affected Los Angeles?

Introduction

Los Angeles (L.A), one of the largest and most famous cities in the U.S. Also known as the “City of Angels” it has made a miraculous transformation, from being once a dwarf city plagued by crime into a bustling city with a population of almost 19 million. But another nickname given to this vast city is the “Motor City”. Los Angeles is recognized nationally and worldwide as being one of the largest cities to be dominated by all forms of transportation, comprising almost entirely of automobiles.

As stated before, Los Angeles used to be a dwarf city. When California became a state in 1850, Los Angeles was just a small frontier town of about 4,000 people dwarfed by the much larger Californian

Original public uncertainty turned into delight, as the state tried marketing towards the people for a new alternative to public transportation. The motor age marked its arrival in the American city with asphalt parking lots and concrete highways. But before the city street could be physically reconstructed to accommodate motor vehicles, it had first to be socially reconstructed as a motor thoroughfare. The Federal Road Act of 1916 would jumpstart the nation’s funding of road construction and maintenance, providing matching funding to states. But it was the Roaring Twenties that would set Los Angeles on an irreversible path as a city dominated by the automobile. L.A.’s population of about 600,000 at the start of the 1920s more than doubled during the decade. The city’s cars would see an even greater increase, from 161,846 cars registered in L.A. County in 1920 to 806,264 registered in 1930. In 1920 Los Angeles had about 170 gas stations. By 1930 there were over 1,500.

Soon enough, Los Angeles would play home to the big three automakers; General Motors, Ford and Chrysler (FCA US).

The automobile industry had an immediate impact on Los Angeles, which has passed throughout the next century as Los Angeles went through an amazing transformation, from a dull, deserted town into the prominent “Motor City”.

But we wonder, how has the car industry exactly affected Los

During these years, most city-dwellers took public transportation to work on a daily basis. Public transportation led to the large influx of people to this modernized city, causing the relatively small town of Los Angeles into a gigantic city. And as we saw before, the fairytale mode of the streetcar’s time starting turning into a nightmare, as noticeable large public dissatisfaction occurred. But the fact of the matter is, most of the streetcar’s issues were a direct cause of the up and coming automobile industry. It was a result of the automobile crowding them out in the 1910s, congesting the roads and often causing accidents that made service unreliable. BY the 1910s, the were only two major transit players left, the Los Angeles Streetway Streetcar Company and the Pacific Electric Railway. Separating the traffic of the autos, pedestrians and streetcars were seen as a priority that would not be realized until the late 20th century. Scott L. Bottles notes this in his book Los Angeles and the Automobile, “As early as 1915, called for plans to separate these trains from regular street traffic with elevated or subway lines.” Now the Council had to decide which direction to take - public transportation or cars? They chose the car, as seen by the Federal Road Act of 1916. The