A Rerun for Red Cars? : Rights-of-Way Purchase May Lead to a Comeback for Rail

Powered by electricity and capable of barreling along at 50 m.p.h., the old Red Cars of the Pacific Electric Railway were a familiar crimson blur against the Orange County landscape as they ferried thousands of riders across Southern California more than 40 years ago.

“It was a very comfortable ride, and in those days, just going through the county’s orange groves was scenic. They should have rehabilitated the line long ago and kept it operating,” said Spencer Crump, a Corona del Mar writer who has devoted two books to the fabled Red Cars and is doing research for a third.

In their heyday, the big Red Cars that began in 1901 and ran in Orange County until July 2, 1950, were the fastest, cleanest and quickest way of moving people from point A to point B.

And now Crump believes the Red Car, or a high-tech facsimile, is about to return.

That’s because the Southern Pacific Transportation Co. agreed last week to sell 177 miles of rights of way to the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission for $450 million, paving the way for a regional commuter rail system.

The agreement, between Southern Pacific Transportation Co. and Los Angeles County, was eagerly greeted in Orange County because a five-mile stretch of the old Pacific Electric Red Car trolley line between Beach Boulevard in Stanton and the Los Angeles County border was included in the deal.

The proposed purchase would close the last gap between the Los Angeles County portion of the line and a 4.5-mile segment already owned by the Orange County Transit District that extends through Garden Grove and Santa Ana, creating the possibility of a Santa Ana link to Los Angeles International Airport.

And in an era of choked freeways, the mystique of the old trolleys remain--even after this year’s introduction of the Long Beach-Los Angeles Blue Line light rail system.

What’s more, Crump said, the specter of soaring oil prices and gasoline shortages means that electric-powered cars and rail transit are “right on track” for the 1990s.

Last week’s purchase agreement supports a plan by Orange County transportation officials to provide rail service to 10 cities in Orange County, stretching south to San Clemente.

“I would be happy if we can buy the rights of way and start the service,” said Dana Reed, chairman of the Orange County Transportation Commission.

But the plan hinges on voter approval of Orange County’s Measure M--a proposed half-cent sales tax for transportation projects--on the Nov. 6 ballot.

Measure M’s critics contend that it would spend too much money on rail projects and car-pool lanes instead of new freeways. Supporters argue that a balanced transportation system is necessary to provide commuting alternatives.

But rail systems are more expensive to build than freeways, said T.J. (Pete) Fielding, former director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Irvine.

“Four lanes of freeway can be used 24 hours a day, moving thousands of motorists. A freeway will always be, in terms of costs and benefits, a more economic solution,” Fielding said.

But freeways can’t handle traffic demand at peak hours, Fielding said, and that’s when “light rail can move more people at a faster rate.”

Sixteen years ago, Orange County voters rejected the first of many proposals similar to Measure M, Fielding said.

“In 1974, everybody said, ‘Oh, we’re never going to get that kind of heavy traffic congestion.’ But look at us now. We’ve high gasoline prices, and toll roads in our immediate future,” Fielding said.

Built in 1901, the red trolley cars operated from the Los Angeles depot, the hub of an 1,100-mile track network in Southern California.

During World War II, the trolleys carried more than 100 million passengers a year. There was a similar period of high ridership in the early 1920s, Crump said.

“They were the method of getting around the region,” said William Farquhar, an Orange Empire Railway Museum volunteer. He recalled the Red Car line to Corona, Redlands and Riverside.

But the bottom line for the trolleys was in the profit-loss column, Farquhar said. Between 1912 and 1952, when competing bus lines bought the trolley company, the system finished in the black only eight times.

In the mid-1940s, the estate of Henry Huntington, who owned the Pacific Electric Co., sold it to National City Lines, a Chicago-based company. The new owners began to substitute buses for trolleys, a process that would be duplicated in more than 40 other cities.

General Motors made the buses and Firestone supplied the tires. General Motors and Firestone were also part owners of National. In 1946, a federal grand jury indicted National, General Motors, Firestone and several other companies on antitrust charges. The case involved alleged preferential treatment given to firms such as General Motors. The defendants were found guilty, and National voided all contracts with the other companies. The fine for each defendant was $5,000.

But the question of whether General Motors and others conspired to dismantle the trolley systems never reached the courts. The defendants insisted that since both trolley systems were reporting losses, shutting them down followed sound business principles.

Barbara Rountree, a Seal Beach resident, rode the Red Cars from her home in Santa Anita Oaks to work in Arcadia during the 1940s. She was upset when the Red Cars stopped running.

“I cried,” Rountree said. “I remember my employer telling me, ‘You know when you come to work next Monday, you’ll have to take the bus.’ It was sad. A lot of my friends cried because we loved the Red Car.”

OLD RED CAR TROLLEY LINES

Orange County’s old Red Cars, electric-powered trolleys that provided regional mass-transit until the early ‘60s, were dicontinued in favor of buses. But last week’s $450-million agreement to buy So. Pacific Transportation Company’s rights of wayin L.A. County could mean the rebirth of a rail system in Orange County with links to LAX.

*The Pacific Electric Railway began in 1901, and the big Red Cars had their last run in 1961.

*The last time the Red Cars carried passengers into Orange County was July 2, 1950, when the final journey was made on Pacific Electric’s Santa Ana line.

*With Los Angeles as its hub, the red trolley cars wound their way over 1,100 miles of track in Southern California.

*During World War II, the trolleys carried more than 100 million passengers a year.

*Each Red Car carried at least 50 passengers and traveled at speeds up to 50 m.p.h.

*The railway was originally owned by Henry E. Huntington.

Source: Spencer Crump, a Corona del Mar author of “Ride the Big Red Cars,” (1962) and “Henry Huntington and the Pacific Electric” (1970).