![]() ![]() The Los Angeles-Pacific merged with the Pacific Electric Railway in 1911. ![]() After nearly two years of boring and construction, rail service through the first Hill Street Tunnel (left of top photograph) began in September, 1909, resulting in a 15-minute reduction in travel times between Los Angeles and points northwest. In 1907, the Los Angeles-Pacific Railway took matters into its own hands by successfully petitioning the city for rights to build a tunnel for the exclusive use of interurban rail cars. Although supported by the city’s Board of Public Works, the project was quickly beset by cost overruns and opposition from property owners, leading to its seemingly indefinite delay. In 1903, an association of businesses along Hill Street floated a proposal to build a tunnel between First and Temple Streets, allowing passenger rail cars and automobiles direct access to Sunset Boulevard from Downtown’s western sections. While of most of them had been covered by the street grid by the turn of the 20th century, their steep grades kept them inaccessible to streetcars and many automobiles. Their impassability only became increasingly problematic as the city grew in order to bypass Bunker Hill and Fort Moore Hill, most traffic between Downtown and its northwestern suburbs followed a roundabout path through Main Street, leading to major bottlenecks between First Street and Sunset Boulevard. Like many of the city’s early public works projects, the Hill Street Tunnels provided a solution to one of Los Angeles’ greatest topographic obstacles to regional mobility, the hills at Downtown’s northwestern edge. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |