AHC: Keep the Pacific Electric System in Southern California

Instead of having Southern California become a large sprawl of freeways run by automobiles in the mid 20th century, maintain the Pacific Electric street car system into the modern era.
 
Too difficult.

1. Pacific Electric was a loss leader for suburban development; it lost money every single year it operated except three.

2. LA grew too quickly for the infrastructure to catch up with it, in eras in which the preferred form of suburban development was single-family sprawl. This happened first in the 1920s and then during and right after WW2. In WW2 in particular there was extensive development in areas that were never connected to Pacific Electric.

3. Early-20c California was unusually anti-public transportation, due to hatred of Southern Pacific.

4. Because early-20c LA wasn't huge, Pacific Electric and LARy were streetcars rather than full subways. This made them vulnerable to congestion as car traffic increased, and attractive targets for removal as driver lobbies intensified. Of note, West Germany and France removed their streetcars as well, they just replaced a few of them by subways.

You can plausibly try to come up with a TL in which LA builds a subway in the 1920s, but it wouldn't look anything like the PE network - there would be fewer, more intensely used lines.
 
Top