The Red Cars of L.A.

In the 1988 animation classic "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?", the plot revolves around a corporate conspiracy to dismantle the Red Car street trolley line that ran through Los Angeles in the 1930s. While this made for an interesting plot point, the Red Cars and real life accusations of conspiracy were hardly fiction. Particularly in the 1920s and 30s, the Red and Yellow Car trolley lines were the most popular form of public transportation in Southern California. At its peak in 1944, the system carried 109 million passengers.

Red Car History

In truth, the Red Car Line began at the very beginning of the 20th Century thanks to railway mogul Henry Huntington and his Pacific Electric Railway Company. At the height of its services, the Red Car line connected the communities of downtown Los Angeles, San Pedro, San Bernardino, Pasadena, Hollywood, Santa Monica, Venice Beach, Redondo Beach, Culver City, Long Beach and Santa Ana.

On March 31, 1963, Southern California electric light rail passenger services made their final run.

The Consortium

For the conspiracy buffs, after the death of Henry Huntington, his Pacific Electric Railway Company was sold by his estate in 1945 to National City Lines, a business consortium of General Motors, Standard Oil, Firestone Tire and Rubber, Philips Petroleum and Mack Truck Manufacturing Company. Soon afterward, National City Lines began dismantling their electric light rail systems not only in L.A., but also throughout the West and Midwest. These clean energy modes of public transportation were then replaced with buses that used diesel fossil fuel and rubber tires produced by members of the consortium.

In 1946, the U.S. Justice Department filed an anti-trust suit against National City Lines. Before going to trial in 1949, consortium companies sold off their shares in National City Lines. At trial, these companies were given a slap on the wrist by the legal system, each defendant paying fines of $5000.

Throughout the years, General Motors and the other consortium companies defended themselves against accusations of conspiracy by pointing fingers at post-war suburban sprawl and the resultant rise in sales of private automobiles and fall in electric light rail system ridership. They also claimed that the Red Cars and other electric light rail systems were never profitable, and that any positive revenue was due to the freight hauled on Pacific Electric rail tracks.

Bradford Snell

In 1974, the Red Car Conspiracy Theory re-emerged as the Oil Embargo and gas station lines were on newspaper front pages. Bradford Snell, a U.S. government attorney presented his NYU School of Business-sponsored paper "American Ground Transportation" to the Senate's Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopolies.

Roger Rabbit

1988 saw an even wider emergence of the Red Car Conspiracy Theory with the release of the hit film "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", based Gary K. Wolf's 1981 novel "Who Censored Roger Rabbit?"

Today, a nostalgic remnant of the Red Car Line, actually two replicas and a refurbished original 1911 Pacific Electric Red Car, runs daily at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro.