A Portland Streetcar | Photo by pdxjeff via Flickr Skipping the bureaucracies of Metro and the city's own Department of Transportation, a coalition of downtown stakeholders, including government officials, voted last week to create a nonprofit to build a 3-mile streetcar line that would travel mostly along Broadway from LA Live to the some-day Grand Avenue Project. The nonprofit will tentatively be named L.A. Streetcar Inc., inspired by Portland Streetcar Inc. who built that......

Photo by Pro-Zak via Flickr It's 11:45 a.m. and City Council is in session getting ready to vote on an item supporting Metro's proposed half-cent sales tax for transportation projects. Their vote would also tell Metro which projects are priorities for the city, including the possibility of a downtown streetcar and getting the Green Line to actually hit LAX. Councilman Jose Huizar spoke up to get some clarification on projects within the city. "Is......

Think LA's relationship with underground rail transit began with the first tunnels blasted out to make way for the Red Line? Think again! LA's first subterranean transit system was a short stretch of tunneling dubbed the "Hollywood Subway," which moved its first passengers under the city in 1925 via electric interurban rail cars. Opening Day in Toluca Yard (end of the Hollywood Subway at 1st and Glendale); original source unkonwn, via California Trolleys The idea......

As mentioned yesterday, Eric Richardson of blogdowntown is visiting Portland on a delegation to study the city's public transit, namely the streetcar system. One of the biggest concerns is construction -- the time it takes and how it affects traffic, both auto and pedestrian. One of the biggest opponents was Mike Powell, of Powell's Books fame. But after the construction came and went, he became a fan....

Red marks the NoHo Streetcar path. Blue marks an idea for a Moorpark Streetcar idea. After a September 2007 LAist post about an idea of putting a streetcar in the NoHo Arts District, it grabbed first-year UCLA student Nguyen Doan's attention. "It really got me to thinking about how useful a streetcar system would be and motivated me to do research on the subject." When Doan was presented with a class assignment instructing students......

View Larger Map Ventura Blvd. is well served by three bus lines, the 750, 150 and 240. During the day on a weekday, you can pretty much walk to a stop and find a bus coming. To the north of the Valley's famous boulevard is the Orange Line, which during the same times of day seems to run every few seconds (it's only at 12 a.m. am I waiting longer than 10 minutes). Sandwiched between......

Now that the NoHo Arts District is up and coming, packed with 20 or so live theatres, new condos, new apartments, a new grocery store, a soon-to-be movie theatre and more, all running up, down and around Lankershim Blvd., is it time to talk about the NoHo Streetcar? One that would run from the junction of the Orange and Red Lines. One that would run down to Lankershim, maybe passed the intersection of hell, aka......

I don't care if the Golden Gate Bridge gets all of the attention. It's actually an orange vermillion anyways, as folk-rocker David Dondero reminds us. I have much love for the Oakland Bay Bridge, with its geometric patterns, sweeping lines and panoramic view of the city. By the way, they will be closing the bridge down for the long weekend, so beware. Cyberspace has given me the virtual ability to drag the entire world down......

- You don't have to be in snow to say "mush." Try urban mushing in Costa Mesa. - "Cardinal Roger M. Mahony today apologized to victims of sexual abuse by priests in the Los Angeles Archdiocese." - Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa skips his monthly appearance on KABC-TV's Eyewitness Newsmakers because of personal questions. - By the 1930s, the Los Angeles streetcar system had nearly 600 miles of track and used more than 1,200 cars. Downtown......