Travel Back 100 Years Ago To LA’s First Bus Taking Off Along Western Avenue

Ah, 1923 in Los Angeles. What a different time.

It was the debut year of iconic L.A. monuments like the Hollywood sign, the Biltmore Hotel, and the Memorial Coliseum.

You had to be there, but that year was also a big deal for local public transit. L.A.’s first bus took off along Western Avenue on Aug. 18, 1923. That’s just over 100 years ago, if you’re counting.

Nowadays, Metro operates some 2,000 buses around Los Angeles. Looking back, what can we learn from the early days of public transit in L.A.? And what is the history behind the city's first bus line?

I took these questions to our transit experts: India Mandelkern, Metro’s blog editor, and Matthew Barrett, who heads Metro's research library and archive.

The bus line along Western Ave. debuted in 1923.

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Courtesy LA Metro

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Setting the scene

Q: India, you write in your piece about the first bus line that local traffic congestion was really bad back in August 1923. What climate was L.A.’s first bus entering into? 

IM: Well, L.A. already had a very robust streetcar network, but Western Avenue, where the first bus line got started, didn't actually have streetcars. For that reason, it was a really great choice for a bus line. The intersection of Wilshire and Western was the busiest intersection in pre-freeway Los Angeles. Also, traffic lights and signals, all those things were really new back then. Driving the streets was a little bit more like the Wild West. If you look at the early photos, it almost looks like a free-for-all.

MB: And there was no freeway system. The amount of time it took to get to Santa Monica in the 1920s is pretty much the same as it is today with the freeways, because of huge growth in population and congestion!

A vintage public bus from the 1920s.

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Courtesy LA Metro

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Q: Like you said, the first bus route was down Western Avenue, between Los Feliz Boulevard and Slauson Avenue. Why was that location chosen?

IM: It was very, very, congested, and it didn't already have streetcar tracks. So the bus was pretty much the only game in town if you wanted to move a large quantity of people in one vehicle.

MB: And this was a joint effort between two major transit providers in L.A. — the Pacific Electric Red Car system, the long-distance Metrolink of its day, and the Yellow Cars of L.A., the local streetcar system. The two of them got together and formed this bus company (called Los Angeles Motor Bus Co.) in order to make connections between their systems. The buses were thought of as a feeder system to the rail systems. And Western just never had any streetcars on it.

When buses were a novel concept

Q: Buses were an entirely new thing back then. What was public perception like, were people resistant or receptive? 

IM: It was really considered a novel, innovative thing to do. In this time, buses were considered more car-like than your streetcar. Early advertisements for buses tout things like, they had leather seats and really spacious aisles and you could board on the curb and you didn't have to go into the middle of the road like many streetcar stops. The public was very enthusiastic about them and within a couple months, another bus line got started and they were carrying about 10,000 passengers every day.

MB: A bus back then was as car-like as you could get if you couldn’t afford a car. It was looked at as a step up from rail.

The interior of an old public bus serving Los Angeles in the 1920s.

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Courtesy LA Metro

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Buses v. streetcars

Q: How did the new bus system interact with the streetcar system? 

IM: As Matthew pointed out, it was a joint venture between two streetcar companies that formed the first bus company. And as early as 1925, 1926, some of the less used streetcar tracks were already being converted into bus lines. There’s this perception that buses ran streetcars out of business, but that isn’t really true. Buses continued into areas where streetcar tracks weren’t going. Streetcar track was expensive to build, and buses were touted as trackless transportation. The idea that they could just go off route, make a detour — that was very innovative at the time.

Q: What were safety precautions like on those early buses? 

MB: Back in the streetcar era, buses were patrolled by special agents that were part of the staff of the L.A. Railway and Pacific Electric and L.A. Motor Coach. (Los Angeles Motor Bus Co. was later renamed Los Angeles Motor Coach Lines). You have to remember they were private companies and fare box revenue was the only revenue they had, so fare evasion was a big deal. The special agents that were employed by the company coordinated with LAPD if there were any issues that required arrests.

They also used to make exact change on buses and trains. In 1968, they went to exact change (fares), because it was too much of a temptation for some passengers to commit robberies of the operator's change belts. So, that indicates to me that things were pretty safe all the way up until maybe the late ‘60s.

Wilshire Boulevard in 1932

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Courtesy LA Metro

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A long history of alternative fuels

Q: I understand L.A. has long experimented with alternative fuel. To what extent was the bus system involved in that? 

MB: We had gas electric buses in the ‘20s. We had 60 propane-powered buses in the ‘50s. We went to propane buses for the mini-bus system, which is today's DASH system, in the ‘70s. The Rapid Transit District (RTD) even built its own in-house air quality lab to try and figure out how to reduce the particulates in diesel with particulate traps, and then they went to methanol and ethanol, and then finally CNG. In the ‘40s-’60s, L.A. had two electric trolley bus lines, and now we're moving back toward electrified buses again. So, for a city that was well-renowned for its oil wealth in the ‘20s and ‘30s, even with all of that cultural pressure and focusing on the petroleum industry, the transit system was still experimenting with alternative fuels during this entire time.

A case for buses as innovation, then and now

Q: Any closing thoughts on the role buses played back then, and now? 

IM: Before we had the resources to build rail, and after the demise of the streetcars, buses were rapid transit. That was the only way that people were able to get around. Buses came out of a moment where crippling automobile congestion was preventing people from getting around, and they reflect this way we’ve responded to situations at hand and found innovative solutions.

For more information about LA’s first bus, you can read India Mandelkern’s piece in Metro’s ‘The Source.’