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Brandon DonnellyLos Angeles and the automobile
Oftentimes when I think about Los Angeles, I think about the fact that you generally have to drive everywhere. And since I have a personal preference for dense and walkable cities, this thought helps me feel slightly less envious about their perfect weather.
Los Angeles is probably the original car city. Here is an excerpt from this excellent post by Brian Potter, where he summarizes a 1987 book by Scott Bottles called, "Los Angeles and the Automobile":
Los Angeles was especially quick to adopt the car. By 1920 Los Angeles had the highest per-capita rate of car ownership in the US, four times more automobiles per capita than the US average, and eight times more than the much-denser Chicago. In 1920, 9 times as many people entered downtown LA via streetcar as via automobile. By 1924, that had nearly equaled.
And interestingly enough, people started using them, almost immediately, to create Uber-like services:
A popular early use of the car for public transit was the jitney. Car owners would pick up passengers (often waiting at streetcar stops) and drive them to their destination for the same price as a streetcar ride (5 cents). Car owners would often simply put their destination in their windshields, and pick up anyone along the way who was headed in the same direction. Because jitney travel was much faster than streetcars, and wasn’t limited to the fixed streetcar routes, jitneys often had better service than streetcars.
Jitney travel first appeared in Los Angeles in 1914, and by November of that year was being used for thousands of trips per day. The jitney quickly spread to other cities. By early 1915, an estimated 62,000 jitneys operated around the country in cities such as San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, and Birmingham. As jitney travel became more popular, electric rail companies found that they were losing significant ridership
What this again underscores is just how disruptive the car was -- right from the outset. It was quickly seen as being more convenient, especially in a city like Los Angeles, which wasn't as dense as its counterparts on the east coast.
Oftentimes when I think about Los Angeles, I think about the fact that you generally have to drive everywhere. And since I have a personal preference for dense and walkable cities, this thought helps me feel slightly less envious about their perfect weather.
Los Angeles is probably the original car city. Here is an excerpt from this excellent post by Brian Potter, where he summarizes a 1987 book by Scott Bottles called, "Los Angeles and the Automobile":
Los Angeles was especially quick to adopt the car. By 1920 Los Angeles had the highest per-capita rate of car ownership in the US, four times more automobiles per capita than the US average, and eight times more than the much-denser Chicago. In 1920, 9 times as many people entered downtown LA via streetcar as via automobile. By 1924, that had nearly equaled.
And interestingly enough, people started using them, almost immediately, to create Uber-like services:
A popular early use of the car for public transit was the jitney. Car owners would pick up passengers (often waiting at streetcar stops) and drive them to their destination for the same price as a streetcar ride (5 cents). Car owners would often simply put their destination in their windshields, and pick up anyone along the way who was headed in the same direction. Because jitney travel was much faster than streetcars, and wasn’t limited to the fixed streetcar routes, jitneys often had better service than streetcars.
Jitney travel first appeared in Los Angeles in 1914, and by November of that year was being used for thousands of trips per day. The jitney quickly spread to other cities. By early 1915, an estimated 62,000 jitneys operated around the country in cities such as San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, and Birmingham. As jitney travel became more popular, electric rail companies found that they were losing significant ridership
What this again underscores is just how disruptive the car was -- right from the outset. It was quickly seen as being more convenient, especially in a city like Los Angeles, which wasn't as dense as its counterparts on the east coast.
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Brandon DonnellyLos Angeles and the automobile
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Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
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