redlightning
Banned
Find a way to prevent the Los Angeles or Southern California freeway system from experiencing the famous traffic problems it has today.
AHC: Prevent LA Traffic From Becoming Infamously Poor
- Thread starter redlightning
- Start date
LA's sprawl was a sore point 70 years ago, as identified in Inside U.S.A. The problem then was (and still is): water; i.e., how to get enough of it to support a burgeoning population. Have one or more water projects fail to be funded in the time of World War I and quite likely LA's growth will be truncated so that today it's more like a somewhat larger San Diego at most.
Failing that, you'd need Henry Huntington and his successors have a more aggressive ridership campaign and provide still more comprehensive service (i.e., Pacific Electric). If the Red Car penetrated much of the greater LA area, providing frequent service, that may slow freeway development and keep some number of cars off the road. Add to that a more aggressive ridership / electrified transit program by the Los Angeles Railway (the streetcar/trolley coach company), including an expansion of the streetcar subway and more trolley coach lines, and that would help also.
Last but not least: a really stringent gasoline tax driving prices upward could help also especially if people figured out that it wasn't economical to drive short distance or engage in stop/go traffic.
Failing that, you'd need Henry Huntington and his successors have a more aggressive ridership campaign and provide still more comprehensive service (i.e., Pacific Electric). If the Red Car penetrated much of the greater LA area, providing frequent service, that may slow freeway development and keep some number of cars off the road. Add to that a more aggressive ridership / electrified transit program by the Los Angeles Railway (the streetcar/trolley coach company), including an expansion of the streetcar subway and more trolley coach lines, and that would help also.
Last but not least: a really stringent gasoline tax driving prices upward could help also especially if people figured out that it wasn't economical to drive short distance or engage in stop/go traffic.
^ Those would all help, but they would all also truncate Los Angeles' growth, which is IMO is not desirable. What might work better is simply having the city of Los Angeles not want massive concrete canyons cutting up neighborhoods everywhere and choose to modernize the Los Angeles Railway and Pacific Electric systems after WWII to try and make them part of the solution. One could also combine that with a MetroLink-style rail system (not easy to do south of downtown LA, but very easy north, west and east of it) to reduce traffic through mass transit as well. This would also require, however, that the system be decently maintained, and New York City in the 1970s and 1980s shows that at times can be a challenge.
jahenders
Banned
A few main options, somewhat inter-related:
1) CA simply doesn't boom/grow as much as IOTL -- less people in the same space -- less congestion
2) LA, and others, don't get rid of it's urban rail networks / street cars and (somehow) keeps them commercially viable and keeps ridership up. In part this assumes a slightly less car-oriented mindset
3) Freeway construction doesn't slow/halt in the late 60s/70s. Multiple additional freeways were planned in/around LA, but Gov Brown halted some of them and affluent communities stopped some others. When they might have been reconsidered decades later, those spaces were already occupied and there are few spaces that could now be used
4) Somewhere along the way, CA develops a fast, cost-efficient inter-city rail system and avoids several costly, and embarrassing, failed attempts that discourage similar efforts in CA and elsewhere
1) CA simply doesn't boom/grow as much as IOTL -- less people in the same space -- less congestion
2) LA, and others, don't get rid of it's urban rail networks / street cars and (somehow) keeps them commercially viable and keeps ridership up. In part this assumes a slightly less car-oriented mindset
3) Freeway construction doesn't slow/halt in the late 60s/70s. Multiple additional freeways were planned in/around LA, but Gov Brown halted some of them and affluent communities stopped some others. When they might have been reconsidered decades later, those spaces were already occupied and there are few spaces that could now be used
4) Somewhere along the way, CA develops a fast, cost-efficient inter-city rail system and avoids several costly, and embarrassing, failed attempts that discourage similar efforts in CA and elsewhere
Well there's Ares96's A Streetcar Named Perseverance timeline about a different history of public transport in the US, the first part covers a Los Angeles which retained their Red and Yellow Car systems and built upon them. I'd recommend giving it a look.
jahenders
Banned
Now THAT shows real "outside the box thinking." You've got a future in congress -- we'll make everyone equal no matter how miserable they are. As they say, "A falling tide lowers all boats."
Kill Robert Moses. Everyone copied his plans (because he had plans and seemed like a success) and those involved running freeways through poor neighbourhoods.
Alternatively (and better) makes Moses non-racist and pro-transit—which would of course probably have to be your POD—in that case his driving ambition would be transit and LA would follow suit because Moses would still be the guy with a plan.
(There's a host of LA cultural and political issues stemming from the Republicans that will also make this tough.)
Aside from that I'll echo Simon's rec above me
.
Alternatively (and better) makes Moses non-racist and pro-transit—which would of course probably have to be your POD—in that case his driving ambition would be transit and LA would follow suit because Moses would still be the guy with a plan.
(There's a host of LA cultural and political issues stemming from the Republicans that will also make this tough.)
Aside from that I'll echo Simon's rec above me
.
What would really work for LA would be interurban commuter rail which would be commuter rail that would run with the freight trains but would be formatted like a subway and made for capacity.