Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority
The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority is an agency that operates public transportation in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. It was formed in 1993 out of a merger of the Southern California Rapid Transit District and the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, it is chartered under state law as a regional transportation planning agency. Metro directly operates light rail, heavy rail and bus rapid transit services, it directs planning for rail and freeway projects within Los Angeles County. It funds 27 local transit agencies as well as access paratransit services; the agency develops and oversees transportation plans, funding programs, both short-term and long-range solutions to mobility and environmental needs in the county. The agency is the primary transit provider for the City of Los Angeles, providing the bulk of such services, while the City of Los Angeles Department of Transportation operates a much smaller system of its own: Commuter Express bus service to outlying suburbs in the city of Los Angeles and the popular DASH mini-bus service in downtown and other neighborhoods.
Metro's headquarters are in a high-rise building adjacent to Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority operates the third-largest public transportation system in the United States by ridership with a 1,433 mi² operating area and 2,000 peak hour buses on the street any given business day. Metro operates 105 miles of urban rail service; the authority has 9,892 employees, making it one of the region's largest employers. The authority partially funds sixteen municipal bus operators and an array of transportation projects including bikeways and pedestrian facilities, local roads and highway improvements, goods movement, Metrolink regional commuter rail, Freeway Service Patrol and freeway call boxes within the greater metropolitan Los Angeles region. Security and law enforcement services on Metro property are provided by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's Transit Services Bureau via contract, in conjunction with Metro Transit Enforcement Department, Los Angeles Police Department and Long Beach Police Department.
In 2006, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority was named Outstanding Transportation System for 2006 by the American Public Transportation Association. Most buses and trains have "America's Best" decals affixed. Metro Rail is a rail mass transit system with four light rail lines; as of November 2016, the system runs a total of 105 miles, with 93 stations and over 316,000 daily weekday boardings. Starting in 2019, lines will be renamed with lettered designations, citing a lack of distinct colors available for future services; the Blue Line is a light rail line running between Downtown Long Beach. The Red Line is a subway line running between Downtown Los North Hollywood; the Green Line is a light rail line running between Redondo Beach and Norwalk in the median of the 105 Freeway. It provides indirect access to Los Angeles International Airport via a shuttle bus; the Purple Line is a subway line running between Downtown Los Angeles and the Mid-Wilshire district of Los Angeles.
Most of its route is shared with the Red Line. The Gold Line is a light rail line running between East Los Angeles and Azusa via Downtown Los Angeles; the Expo Line is a light rail line running between Downtown Los Santa Monica. Metro Busway is an express bus system with characteristics of bus rapid transit with two lines operating on dedicated or shared-use busways; the system runs a total of 60 miles, with 28 stations and over 42,000 daily weekday boardings as of May 2016. The Metro Busway system is meant to mimic the Metro Rail system, both in the vehicle's design and in the operation of the line. Vehicles stop at dedicated stations, vehicles receive priority at intersections and are painted in a silver livery similar to Metro Rail vehicles; the Metro Orange Line is a bus rapid transit line running between North Chatsworth. The Metro Silver Line is a limited-stop bus line running between El Monte, Downtown Los Angeles, Harbor Gateway, with some buses serving San Pedro. Metro is the primary bus operator in the Los Angeles Basin, the San Fernando Valley, the western San Gabriel Valley.
Other transit providers operate more frequent service in the rest of the county. Regions in Los Angeles County that Metro Bus does not serve at all include rural regions, the Pomona Valley, the Santa Clarita Valley, the Antelope Valley. Metro operates two types of bus services. However, when mechanical problems or availability equipment occurs, a bus of any color may be substituted to continue service on the route. Metro Local buses are painted in an off-orange color which the agency has dubbed “California Poppy”; this type of service makes frequent stops along major thoroughfares. There are 18,500 stops on 189 bus lines; some Metro Local routes make limited stops along part of their trip but do not participate in the Rapid program. Some Metro Local bus lines are operated by contractors MV Transportation, Southland Transit, Transdev. Metro Rapid buses are distinguished by their bright red color which the agency has dubbed “Rapid Red”; this bus rapid transit service offers limited stops on many of the county's more heavi
Los Angeles
Los Angeles the City of Los Angeles and known by its initials L. A. is the most populous city in California, the second most populous city in the United States, after New York City, the third most populous city in North America. With an estimated population of four million, Los Angeles is the cultural and commercial center of Southern California; the city is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic diversity and the entertainment industry, its sprawling metropolis. Los Angeles is the largest city on the West Coast of North America. Los Angeles is in a large basin bounded by the Pacific Ocean on one side and by mountains as high as 10,000 feet on the other; the city proper, which covers about 469 square miles, is the seat of Los Angeles County, the most populated county in the country. Los Angeles is the principal city of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second largest in the United States after that of New York City, with a population of 13.1 million. It is part of the Los Angeles-Long Beach combined statistical area the nation's second most populous area with a 2015 estimated population of 18.7 million.
Los Angeles is one of the most substantial economic engines within the United States, with a diverse economy in a broad range of professional and cultural fields. Los Angeles is famous as the home of Hollywood, a major center of the world entertainment industry. A global city, it has been ranked 6th in the Global Cities Index and 9th in the Global Economic Power Index; the Los Angeles metropolitan area has a gross metropolitan product of $1.044 trillion, making it the third-largest in the world, after the Tokyo and New York metropolitan areas. Los Angeles hosted the 1932 and 1984 Summer Olympics and will host the event for a third time in 2028; the city hosted the Miss Universe pageant twice, in 1990 and 2006, was one of 9 American cities to host the 1994 FIFA men's soccer World Cup and one of 8 to host the 1999 FIFA women's soccer World Cup, hosting the final match for both tournaments. Home to the Chumash and Tongva, Los Angeles was claimed by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo for Spain in 1542 along with the rest of what would become Alta California.
The city was founded on September 4, 1781, by Spanish governor Felipe de Neve. It became a part of Mexico in 1821 following the Mexican War of Independence. In 1848, at the end of the Mexican–American War, Los Angeles and the rest of California were purchased as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, becoming part of the United States. Los Angeles was incorporated as a municipality on April 4, 1850, five months before California achieved statehood; the discovery of oil in the 1890s brought rapid growth to the city. The completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, delivering water from Eastern California assured the city's continued rapid growth; the Los Angeles coastal area was settled by the Chumash tribes. A Gabrieleño settlement in the area was called iyáangẚ, meaning "poison oak place". Maritime explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo claimed the area of southern California for the Spanish Empire in 1542 while on an official military exploring expedition moving north along the Pacific coast from earlier colonizing bases of New Spain in Central and South America.
Gaspar de Portolà and Franciscan missionary Juan Crespí, reached the present site of Los Angeles on August 2, 1769. In 1771, Franciscan friar Junípero Serra directed the building of the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, the first mission in the area. On September 4, 1781, a group of forty-four settlers known as "Los Pobladores" founded the pueblo they called El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles,'The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels'; the present-day city has the largest Roman Catholic Archdiocese in the United States. Two-thirds of the Mexican or settlers were mestizo or mulatto, a mixture of African and European ancestry; the settlement remained a small ranch town for decades, but by 1820, the population had increased to about 650 residents. Today, the pueblo is commemorated in the historic district of Los Angeles Pueblo Plaza and Olvera Street, the oldest part of Los Angeles. New Spain achieved its independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821, the pueblo continued as a part of Mexico.
During Mexican rule, Governor Pío Pico made Los Angeles Alta California's regional capital. Mexican rule ended during the Mexican–American War: Americans took control from the Californios after a series of battles, culminating with the signing of the Treaty of Cahuenga on January 13, 1847. Railroads arrived with the completion of the transcontinental Southern Pacific line to Los Angeles in 1876 and the Santa Fe Railroad in 1885. Petroleum was discovered in the city and surrounding area in 1892, by 1923, the discoveries had helped California become the country's largest oil producer, accounting for about one-quarter of the world's petroleum output. By 1900, the population had grown to more than 102,000; the completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, under the supervision of William Mulholland, assured the continued growth of the city. Due to clauses in the city's charter that prevented the City of Los Angeles from selling or providing water from the aqueduct to any area outside its borders, many adjacent city and communities became compelled to annex themselves into Los Angeles.
Los Angeles created the first municipal zoning ordinance in the United States. On September 14, 1908, the Los Angeles City Council promulgated residential and industrial land use zones; the new ordinance established three residential zones of a single type, where industrial uses were
Port of Los Angeles
The Port of Los Angeles called America's Port, is a port complex that occupies 7,500 acres of land and water along 43 miles of waterfront and adjoins the separate Port of Long Beach. The port is located in San Pedro Bay in the San Pedro and Wilmington neighborhoods of Los Angeles 20 miles south of downtown. A department of the City of Los Angeles, the Port of Los Angeles supports employment for 517,000 people throughout the LA County Region and 1.6 million worldwide. The cargo coming into the port represents 20% of all cargo coming into the United States; the Port's Channel Depth is 53 feet. The port has 27 cargo terminals, 86 container cranes, 8 container terminals, 113 miles of on-dock rail; the LA Port imports furniture, electronics, automobile parts, plastics. The Port exports wastepaper and animal feed, scrap metal and soybeans; the port's major trading partners are China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Vietnam. For public safety, the Port of Los Angeles utilizes the Los Angeles Port Police for police service in the port and to its local communities, the Los Angeles Fire Department to provide fire and EMS services to the port and its local communities, the U.
S. Coast Guard for water way security at the port, Homeland Security to protect federal land at the port, the Los Angeles County Lifeguards to provide lifeguard services for open water outside the harbor while Los Angeles City Recreation & Parks Department lifeguards patrol the inner Cabrillo Beach. In 1542, Juan Rodriquez Cabrillo discovered the "Bay of Smokes." The south-facing San Pedro Bay was a shallow mudflat, too soft to support a wharf. Visiting ships had two choices: stay far out at anchor and have their goods and passengers ferried to shore, or beach themselves; that sticky process is described in Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana, Jr., a crew member on an 1834 voyage that visited San Pedro Bay. Phineas Banning improved shipping when he dredged the channel to Wilmington in 1871 to a depth of 10 feet; the port handled 50,000 tons of shipping that year. Banning owned a stagecoach line with routes connecting San Pedro to Salt Lake City and Yuma, in 1868 he built a railroad to connect San Pedro Bay to Los Angeles, the first in the area.
After Banning's death in 1885, his sons pursued their interests in promoting the port, which handled 500,000 tons of shipping in that year. The Southern Pacific Railroad and Collis P. Huntington wanted to create Port Los Angeles at Santa Monica and built the Long Wharf there in 1893. However, the Los Angeles Times publisher Harrison Gray Otis and U. S. Senator Stephen White pushed for federal support of the Port of Los Angeles at San Pedro Bay; the Free Harbor Fight was settled when San Pedro was endorsed in 1897 by a commission headed by Rear Admiral John C. Walker. With U. S. government support, breakwater construction began in 1899, the area was annexed to Los Angeles in 1909. The Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners was founded in 1907. In 1912 the Southern Pacific Railroad completed its first major wharf at the port. During the 1920s, the port surpassed San Francisco as the West Coast's busiest seaport. In the early 1930s, a massive expansion of the port was undertaken with the construction of a breakwater three miles out and over two miles in length.
In addition to the construction of this outer breakwater, an inner breakwater was built off Terminal Island with docks for seagoing ships and smaller docks built at Long Beach. It was this improved harbor. During World War II, the port was used for shipbuilding, employing more than 90,000 people. In 1959, Matson Navigation Company's Hawaiian Merchant delivered 20 containers to the port, beginning the port's shift to containerization; the opening of the Vincent Thomas Bridge in 1963 improved access to Terminal Island and allowed increased traffic and further expansion of the port. In 1985, the port handled one million containers in a year for the first time. In 2000, the Pier 400 Dredging and Landfill Program, the largest such project in America, was completed. By 2013, more than half a million containers were moving through the Port every month. Since 2018, the SpaceX BFR, designed for human missions to Mars, is being produced in a factory at the port; the port district is an independent, self-supporting department of the government of the City of Los Angeles.
The port is under the control of a five-member Board of Harbor Commissioners appointed by the mayor and approved by the city council, is administered by an executive director. The port maintains the highest rating attainable for self-funded ports; the port has about a dozen pilots, including two chiefs. Pilots have specialized knowledge of San Pedro Bay, they meet the ships waiting to enter the harbor and provide advice as the vessel is steered through the congested waterway to the dock. The port's container volume was 9.3 million twenty-foot equivalent units in calendar year 2017, a 5.5% increase over 2016's record-breaking year of 8.8 million TEU. It's the most cargo moved annually by a Western Hemisphere port; the port is the busiest port in the United States by container volume, the 19th-busiest container port in the world, the 10th-busiest worldwide when combined with the neighboring Port of Long Beach. The port is the number-one freight gateway in the United States when ranked by the value of shipments passing through it.
The port's top trading partners in 2016 were: China/Hong Kong Japan Vietnam South Korea Tai
Coast Starlight
The Coast Starlight is a passenger train operated by Amtrak on the West Coast of the United States. It runs from Seattle, Washington, to Los Angeles, via the San Francisco Bay Area; the train was the first to offer direct service between the two cities. Its name is a combination of the Coast Daylight and the Starlight; the train has operated continuously since Amtrak's formation in 1971. Unique among Amtrak's long-distance trains, the Coast Starlight featured a Hi-Level lounge for sleeping car passengers — the "Pacific Parlour Car" —, discontinued in February 2018. Before the formation of Amtrak, no one passenger train ran the length of the West Coast; the closest equivalent was the Southern Pacific Railroad's West Coast, which ran via the San Joaquin Valley from Los Angeles to Portland, Oregon from 1924 to 1949, with through cars to Seattle via the Great Northern Railway. By 1971, the SP operated just two daily trains between Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area: the Los Angeles–San Francisco Coast Daylight via the Coast Line, the Los Angeles–Oakland San Joaquin Daylight via the Central Valley.
The SP operated the tri-weekly Cascade between Oakland and Portland, Oregon. The Burlington Northern Railroad and Union Pacific Railroad ran three daily round trips between Portland and Seattle; the Santa Fe ran the San Diegan between San Diego. With the start of Amtrak operations on May 1, 1971, a single train began running between Seattle and San Diego; the unnamed train ran three days a week. On November 14, Amtrak extended the Oakland–Los Angeles train to San Diego, renumbered it to #12/13, renamed it Coast Daylight; the Seattle–San Diego train became the Coast Daylight/Starlight northbound and Coast Starlight/Daylight southbound. Both trains were cut back from San Diego to Los Angeles in April 1972, replaced by a third San Diegan. On June 10, 1973, Amtrak began running the combined Coast Daylight/Starlight daily for the summer months. Positive response led to Amtrak to retain this service, the Coast Daylight name was dropped on May 19, 1974. An additional train, the Spirit of California, ran the section of the route between Sacramento and Los Angeles on an overnight schedule from October 25, 1981 to September 30, 1983.
From November 10, 1996 to October 25, 1997, through coaches were transferred between the Coast Starlight and San Diegan at Los Angeles. The Coast Starlight used the Southern Pacific West Valley Line between Tehama and Davis; that route bypassed Sacramento. On April 26, 1982, the train was rerouted via Roseville on the Southern Pacific Valley Subdivision and Martinez Subdivision, with stops added at Sacramento and Chico, per request from the state. In 1999, the Coast Starlight was rerouted onto the more direct ex-Western Pacific Sacramento Subdivision between Marysville and Sacramento, with the Marysville stop closed. Ridership declined by 26% between 1999–2005 as freight congestion and track maintenance on the Union Pacific Railroad reduced the Coast Starlight's on-time performance to 2%, which Amtrak characterized as "dismal." By mid-summer in 2006 delays of 5–11 hours were common. Critics dubbed the train the Star-late. During early summer 2008, the Coast Starlight was relaunched with new amenities and refurbished equipment.
In July 2008, refurbished Pacific Parlour cars returned to service as part of the relaunch. This was due to the success of Amtrak's relaunches of the Empire Builder. Between FY2008 and FY2009, ridership on the Coast Starlight jumped 15% from 353,657 passengers to 406,398 passengers. Operating conditions on the UP improved as well. Service was suspended north of Sacramento for a month in 2017 after a freight derailment damaged a bridge near Mount Shasta, California. On February 24, 2019, train #11 struck a fallen tree near Oakridge, Oregon after a rare heavy snowstorm; the train was stranded for 36 hours before tracks could be cleared for a Union Pacific locomotive to tow the train back to Eugene-Springfield. The 2018 California State Rail Plan, prepared by Caltrans, outlines a number of planned improvements to rail infrastructure in the state of California; these proposals include near-term plans to create additional stops on the Coast Subdivision at Soledad and King City for use by the Coast Starlight.
There is a proposal in the Capitol Corridor Vision plan to improve the right-of-way shared by the Capitol Corridor and Coast Starlight between Oakland and Martinez. The proposal would re-route the train from along the coastline to a new tunnel through Franklin Canyon and a right-of-way next to California State Route 4 that would reduce the trip time by several minutes. Except for two sections, most of the Coast Starlight route is on former Southern Pacific lines now owned by the Union Pacific Railroad; the Coast Starlight runs over the following lines: BNSF Seattle Subdivision: Seattle to Portland, Oregon UP Brooklyn Subdivision: Portland to Eugene, Oregon UP Cascade Subdivision: Eugene to Klamath Falls, Oregon UP Black Butte Subdivision: Klamath Falls to Dunsmuir, California UP Valley Subdivision: Dunsmuir to Marysville, California UP Sacramento Subdivision: Marysville to Sacramento, California UP Martinez Subdivision: Sacramento to Oakland UP Niles Subdivision: Oakland to Elmhurst UP Coast Subdivision: Elmhurst to San Luis Obispo UP Santa Barbara Subdivision: San Luis Obispo to Moorpark, California UP/Metrolink Ventura Subdivision: Moorpark to Taylor Yard, Los Angeles Metrolink River Subdivision: Taylor Yard to Los Angeles Union StationThe Coast Starlight is divert
Pacific Electric
The Pacific Electric Railway Company, nicknamed the Red Cars, was a owned mass transit system in Southern California consisting of electrically powered streetcars, interurban cars, buses and was the largest electric railway system in the world in the 1920s. Organized around the city centers of Los Angeles and San Bernardino, it connected cities in Los Angeles County, Orange County, San Bernardino County and Riverside County; the system shared dual gauge track with the 3 ft 6 in narrow gauge Los Angeles Railway, "Yellow Car," or "LARy" system on Main Street in downtown Los Angeles, on 4th Street, along Hawthorne Boulevard south of downtown Los Angeles toward the cities of Hawthorne and Torrance. The system had four districts: Northern District: San Gabriel Valley, including Pasadena, Mount Lowe, South Pasadena, Alhambra, El Monte, Duarte, Azusa, Sierra Madre, Monrovia. Eastern District: Pomona, San Bernardino, Arrowhead Springs, Riverside and Redlands in the Inland Empire. Southern District: Long Beach, Newport Beach, Huntington Beach, San Pedro via Dominguez, Santa Ana, El Segundo, Redondo Beach via Gardena, San Pedro Via Torrance.
Western District: Hollywood, Glendale/Burbank, San Fernando Valley, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Manhattan/Redondo/Hermosa Beaches, Playa Del Rey. Electric trolleys first appeared in Los Angeles in 1887. In 1895 the Pasadena & Pacific Railway was created from a merger of the Pasadena and Los Angeles Railway and the Los Angeles Pacific Railway The Pasadena & Pacific Railway boosted Southern California tourism, living up to its motto "from the mountains to the sea." The Pacific Electric Railway was created in 1901 by railroad executive Henry E. Huntington and banker Isaias W. Hellman; as a Vice President of the Southern Pacific Railroad, operated by his uncle, Collis P. Huntington, Huntington had a background in electric trolley lines in San Francisco where he oversaw SP's effort to consolidate many smaller street railroads into one organized network. Hellman, the President of the Nevada Bank, San Francisco's largest, became one of the largest bond holders for these lines and he and the younger Huntington developed a close business relationship.
The success of their San Francisco trolley adventure and Hellman's experience in financing some early Los Angeles trolley lines led them to invest in the purchase of some existing downtown Los Angeles lines which they began to standardize and organize into one network called the Los Angeles Railway. When uncle Collis died, Henry lost a boardroom battle for control of the Southern Pacific to Union Pacific President E. H. Harriman. Huntington decided to focus his energies on Southern California. In May 1901, Southern California's leading banker for three decades, wrote Huntington that "the time is at hand when we should commence building suburban railroads out of the city." Hellman added that he had tasked engineer Epes Randolph to survey and lay out the company's first line which would be to Long Beach. In that same year and Hellman incorporated a new entity, the Pacific Electric Railway of California, formed to construct new electric rail lines to connect Los Angeles with surrounding cities.
Hellman and his group of investors owned the controlling majority of stock and the newspapers of the time referred to it as the Huntington-Hellman syndicate. Using surrogates, the syndicate began rights-of-ways; the new company's first main project, the line to Long Beach, opened July 4, 1902. Huntington experienced periods of opposition from organized labor with the construction of the new railways. Tensions between union leaders and like-minded Los Angeles businessmen were high from the early 1900s up through the 1920s. Strikes and boycotts troubled the Pacific Electric throughout those years until they reached the height of violence in the 1919 Streetcar Strike of Los Angeles; the efforts of organized labor simmered with the onset of World War I. Railroads were one part of the enterprise. Revenue from passenger traffic generated a profit, unlike freight; the real money for the investors was in supplying electric power to new communities and in developing and selling real estate. To get the railways and electricity to their towns, local groups offered the Huntington interests opportunities in local land.
Soon Huntington and his partners had significant holdings in the land companies developing Naples, Bay City, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach and Redondo Beach. Harriman, who controlled the powerful Southern Pacific Railroad, was concerned with the competition that these new electric lines gave his steam railroad traffic, had been prodding Huntington for joint ownership of the lines but Huntington refused to negotiate. In early 1903, Harriman proposed a franchise plan with three-cent fare plan to the Los Angeles City Council, a plan which, if accepted, would have handicapped the other railways severely. Huntington countered with a ticket book which gave the rider 500 miles of travel for $6.25, which undercut the Harriman strategy. The Council vetoed the franchise idea, unable to believe adequate service could be provided for such a low fare. On April 14, 1903, Harriman bought Hook’s Los Angeles Traction Company, which ran lines within the downtown area and, through its California Pacific subsidiary, was constructing a line from Los Angeles to San Pedro.
The final confrontation came over a bidding war for the 6th Street franchise, in which the franchise went to the top bidder for $110,000, with Harriman the secret winner. In May 1903, Huntington made an overnight
Tramway track
Tramway track is used on tramways or light rail operations. Grooved rails are used to provide a protective flangeway in the trackwork in city streets. Like standard rail tracks, tram tracks consist of two parallel steel rails. Tram rails can be placed on several surfaces, such as with standard rails on sleepers like railway tracks, or with grooved rails on concrete sleepers into street surfaces for street running. Tram rails in street have the disadvantage. An environmentally friendly or ecologically friendly alternative is to lay tracks into grass turf surfaces. Tramway tracks have been in existence since the mid 16th century, they were made of wood, but during the late 18th century iron and steel came into use prominently. The first street tramways were laid in 1832 in New York by John Stephenson to assist horses pulling buses on dirt roads when the roads were muddy from wet weather; the rails enabled a horse to pull a load of 10 tonnes compared to 1 tonne on a dirt road. The evolution of street tramway tracks paralleled the transition from horse power to mechanical and electric power.
In a dirt road, the rails needed a foundation a mass concrete raft. Highway authorities made tramway companies pave the rest of the road with granite or similar stone blocks, at extra cost; the first tramways had a rail projecting above the road surface, or a step set into the road, both of which were apt to catch the narrow tyres of horse-drawn carriages. The invention by Alphonse Loubat in 1852 of grooved rail enabled tramways to be laid without causing a nuisance to other road users, except unsuspecting cyclists, who could get their wheels caught in the groove. A grooved rail, groove rail, or girder rail is a special rail with a groove designed for tramway or railway track in pavement or grassed surfaces; the rail has the guard on the other. The guard provides accommodation for the flange; the guard may act as a checkrail. Grooved rail was invented in 1852 by Alphonse Loubat, a French inventor who developed improvements in tram and rail equipment, helped develop tram lines in New York City and Paris.
The invention of grooved rail enabled tramways to be laid without causing a nuisance to other road users, except unsuspecting cyclists, who could get their wheels caught in the groove. The grooves may become filled with gravel and dirt and need clearing from time to time, this being done by a "scrubber" tram. Failure to clear the grooves can lead to a bumpy ride for the passengers, damage to either wheel or rail and derailing; the traditional form of grooved rail is the girder guard section illustrated below. This rail is a modified form of flanged rail and requires a special mounting for weight transfer and gauge stabilisation. If the weight is carried by the roadway subsurface, steel ties are needed at regular intervals to maintain the gauge. Installing these means that the whole surface needs to be excavated and reinstated. Block rail is a lower profile form of girder guard rail. In profile it is more like a solid form of bridge rail with a guard added. Removing the web and combining the head section directly with the foot section would result in a weak rail, so additional thickness is required in the combined section.
Electrification needed other developments, most notably heavier rails to cope with electric tramcars weighing 12 tonnes rather than the 4 tonne horse-drawn variety. In some cities where overhead electric cables were deemed intrusive, underground conduits with electrical conductors were used. Examples of this were New York, Washington DC, London and Budapest; the conduit system of electrical power was expensive to install and maintain, although Washington did not close until 1962. Attempts were made with alternative systems not needing overhead wires. There were many systems of “surface” contact, where studs were set in the road surface, energised by a passing tram, either mechanically or magnetically, to supply power through a skate carried under the tram; these systems all failed due to the problem of reliability and not always turning off after the tram had passed, resulting in the occasional electrocution of horses and dogs. In the last five years a new system of surface contact has been installed in the Bordeaux tramway by Alstom.
Prior to the universal introduction of electric power, many tramways were cable hauled, with a continuous cable carried in a conduit under the road, with a slot in the road surface through which the tram could clasp the cable for motion. This system can still be seen in San Francisco in California as well as the system of the Great Orme in Wales; these needed a rather more substantial track formation. Media related to Tram tracks at Wikimedia Commons LR55 Track System Full details LR55 track suppliers and advisers European Girder Guard Rail Sections and Tram/Street Car Grooved BLOCK Rail without Web Testing Girder Rail on the MBTA. Wirth Girder Rail Grooved or girder rail MRT Track & Services Co. Inc / Krupp, T and girder rails, scroll down. Block rails ThyssenKrupp grooved rail Hilton, George W.. The Electric Interurban Railways in America. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-4014-2. Retrieved 10 June 20
Los Angeles metropolitan area
The Los Angeles metropolitan area known as Metropolitan Los Angeles or the Southland, is the 30th largest metropolitan area in the world and the second-largest metropolitan area in the United States. It is the 3rd largest city by GDP in the world with a $1 trillion+ economy, it is in the southern portion of the U. S. state of California. The tallest building in the Los Angeles metropolitan area is the Wilshire Grand Center at 1,100 feet in Downtown Los Angeles; the metropolitan area is defined by the Office of Management and Budget as the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area, consisting of Los Angeles and Orange counties, a metropolitan statistical area used for statistical purposes by the United States Census Bureau and other agencies. Its land area is 4,850 sq. mi and its estimated 2016 population was 13,310,447. Los Angeles and Orange counties are the first and third most populous counties in California and Los Angeles, with 9,819,000 people in 2010, is the most populous county in the United States.
The Los Angeles metropolitan area is the most populous metropolitan area in the western United States and the largest in area in the United States. The metro area has at its core the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim corridor, an urbanized area defined by the Census Bureau with a population 12,150,996 as of the 2010 Census; the Census Bureau defines a wider commercial region based on commuting patterns, the Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA Combined Statistical Area, more known as the Greater Los Angeles Area a megapolitan area consisting of three metropolitan areas, with an estimated population of 18,788,800 in 2017. This includes the three additional counties of Ventura and San Bernardino; the total land area of the combined statistical area is 33,955 sq. mi. The counties and county groupings comprising the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area are listed below with 2017 U. S. Bureau of the Census estimates of their populations. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale, CA Metropolitan Division Los Angeles County Anaheim-Santa Ana-Irvine, CA Metropolitan Division Orange County Major divisions of the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area East: Eastside, San Gabriel Valley, Pomona Valley West: Westside, Beach Cities South: South Bay, Palos Verdes Peninsula, South Los Angeles, Gateway Cities, North Orange County, South Orange County North: San Fernando Valley, portions of the Antelope Valley and Santa Clarita Valley Central: Downtown Los Angeles, Mid-Wilshire In addition to the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area, the following Metropolitan Statistical Areas are included in the Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA Combined Statistical Area: Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area Ventura County Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area Riverside County, California San Bernardino County, California The Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA CSA is a multicore metropolitan region containing several urban areas.
The combined statistical area is a multicore metropolitan region containing several urban areas. The following is a list of communities with populations over 50,000 in the Los Angeles metropolitan area with 2011 United States Census Bureau estimates of their population. Communities in italics are unincorporated and their populations are from the 2010 Census, while those in bold are considered principal cities of the metropolitan area by the Census Bureau, which represent significant employment centers; the economy of the Los Angeles metropolitan area is famously and based on the entertainment industry, with a particular focus on television, motion pictures, interactive games, recorded music – the Hollywood district of Los Angeles and its surrounding areas are known as the "movie capital of the United States" due to the region's extreme commercial and historical importance to the American motion picture industry. Other significant sectors include shipping/international trade – at the adjacent Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach, together comprising the United States' busiest seaport – as well as aerospace, petroleum and apparel, tourism.
The City of Los Angeles is home to five Fortune 500 companies: energy company Occidental Petroleum, healthcare provider Health Net, metals distributor Reliance Steel & Aluminum, engineering firm AECOM, real estate group CB Richard Ellis. Other companies headquartered in Los Angeles include American Apparel, City National Bank, 20th Century Fox, Latham & Watkins, Metro Interactive, LLC, Premier America, Dunn & Crutcher, DeviantArt, Guess?, O’Melveny & Myers. Korean Air's US passenger and cargo operations headquarters are in two separate offices in Los Angeles. Entertainment and media giant The Walt Disney Company is headquartered in nearby Burbank; the Los Angeles-Orange County metro area alone has an economy of $1.044 trillion, or the total economic output or income of Indonesia's 250 million people. This is evident when comparing the coast with the Inland Empire
