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ChineseMTA and Monorails: History Lesson
Over at Blogdowntown, the ever inquisitive Eric discovered that the MTA was created in 1952 in order to construct a monorail from the Valley to Long Beach. Matt Barrett, the Metro Librarian (who hooked me up with some great links to some MetroMovies you’ll be viewing the in future), chimed in to clarify some facts about the beginnings of the MTA:
“The first MTA was formed by the State in 1951 for the expressed purpose of STUDYING, not constructing, a monorail line from Long Beach to Panorama City. That first MTA failed at public relations when the monorail lobby moved in (like the MagLevers are doing now) and offered to build systems for “free” in exchange for the next 40 years of farebox revenues…”
He goes on to discuss the war between City and the County over public subsidies of transit plans. Most serious transit advocates seem to be against the concept of a monorail as a legitimate mode of public transit today, but it’s not suprising seeing it seriously considered in the old days because of LA’s past obsession with googie architecture like the LAX theme building among others. As Matt said in an Aug. 2005 LA Weekly article chronicling LA’s rail history, “It was part of the whole sci-fi, Ray Bradbury city-of-the-future thing. They were obsessed with monorail. They had a one-track mind.”
Very interesting stuff, especially as Eric pointed out, because of the controversy that always comes up on Los Angeles blogs whenever the subject of a monorail comes up.
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Clarification: the first MTA was created in 1952. It was succeeded by the Southern California Rapid Transit District in 1963 in order to build a heavy-rail system similar to the one planned in the Bay Area, which is today’s BART.
The MTA of today was formally created in 1993, with the merger of the RTD and the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission. This was created by the state legislature. By this time, the RTD had not only failed to create a regionwide transit network, and the other counties had created their own transit agencies and took away control from RTD. These are Omnitrans in San Bernardino, Riverside Transit Agency in Riverside County and Orange County Transit Districtin Orange County. The OCTD, like RTD, merged with a policy-making body to form today’s Orange County Transportation Authority.