WeHoNews.com:
Subway To Sea Stirs Up WeHo Trolley Memories
Monday, June 1, 2009 – By Charles J. Forscher, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California (Monday, June 1, 2009) - While attending a recent public forum about the planning for the Subway To The Sea through West Hollywood and Los Angeles, the subject of parking came up.
The Subway To The Sea is under development and might contain a WeHo spur. WeHo News.
A technical problem, it seems, is that many of the expected patrons of the projected subway lines will need a place to park their vehicles.
The two proposed subway routes passing through WeHo, both veering off Santa Monica Boulevard are, a route down La Cienega Blvd, and, a route, down San Vicente, both proposed routes to connect with the expanded Wilshire Boulevard line.
For either selection, a parking structure on a triangular parcel of vacant land near Robertson and Melrose Boulevards would assist the Metro subway dream into becoming a reality, more so if shuttle service could be provided between it and other parking structures, and the new subway station, either at San Vicente or La Cienega.
An April 27th letter to the editor about the pink line brought back sweet memories for me.
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The original Pacific Electric line out of Hollywood ran over the hill from Hollywood and La Brea Boulevards, through an exclusive alley right of way, and connected with the other line at Fairfax and Santa Monica Boulevard. Photo courtesy “Images Of America: West Hollywood,” a history of WeHo. Arcadia Publishing. WeHo News.
In regards to building a light rail line in WeHo the original Pacific Electric line out of Hollywood ran over the hill from Hollywood and La Brea Boulevards, through an exclusive alley right of way, and connected with the other line at Fairfax and Santa Monica Boulevard.
Traces of the Cut Off (short cut) can be discerned in the odd driveways, tracts where apartment houses have been built, and a unique liquor store, the former P.E. station where the tracks intersected Fountain Avenue.
Despite this exclusive right of way, competition with automobile traffic on both Hollywood Boulevard, and Santa Monica Boulevard in WeHo killed it and other such lines across Los Angeles County.
In the late 1940's the management of the Pacific Electric tried to sell the City Fathers into joining the P.E. in the construction of a series of subway lines into downtown Los Angeles, but the City Fathers wanted freeways.
I had a unique experience along the Cut Off.
Charles Forscher lives in LA a few miles outside West Hollywood, where he spent his youth and formative years. He contributes memories about growing to adulthood in WeHo. WeHo News.
I had been clamoring for a trolley car ride.
My father, being a rail fan also, surprised me and my mother one day after picking her up from a business appointment at the west end of Hollywood Boulevard, which at the time stood lined with old mansions.
Dad made a left turn at Hollywood Blvd. where a huge Temple now stands to cross the tracks.
Instead of crossing the tracks dad suddenly steered our post World War II-era Dodge onto the asphalt paved trolley tracks’ right of way, and traveled a few blocks west along it, a rubber-wheeled gas-powered auto carrying a delighted nine year-old, almost to the spot at which the tracks intersected Sunset Boulevard.
The Balloon Route trolley excursion once ran through West Hollywood (then named Sherman) past the Sherman power station and car yard at San Vicente & Santa Monica Boulevards. Photo courtesy “Images Of America: West Hollywood,” a history of WeHo. Arcadia Publishing.WeHo News.
The alley way smelled of axle grease and ozone from countless trolley poles sparking as they passed through electric junctions in the wire overhead.
T’was one of those moments that stay with you, a brief deliciously illegal and very dangerous moment I will treasure unto my (not that far off any longer) death..
While I'd love to see light rail in WeHo again, it is simply no longer an option.
The last open right of way was on Santa Monica Boulevard through the heart of WeHo and the vestiges of that vanished with the reconstruction of Santa Monica Blvd.
We would have already had a subway here if P.E. had been saved and not crushed in the late 1940s.
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