Rapid Transit District
   Throughout 1992, the Los Angeles County Transit Commission and the RTD held hearings and public forums to bring the electric trolleybus (ETB) back to Los Angeles. (see also Los Angeles Transit Lines) Cited as a partial solution to solving the air quality problem in Southern California, (800 tons of pollution annually), the meetings resulted in identifying twelve existing lines that the RTD hoped to have electrified and in service by 1995.
Routes:
  • West 3rd Street
  • West 6th Street-Whittier Boulevard
  • West Pico Boulevard-East 1st Street
  • Broadway
  • West 8th Street-East Olympic Boulevard
  • Garvey Avenue
  • Vermont Avenue
  • Van Nuys Boulevard
  • a new Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena "cross-town" line
  • a new Hollywood-Pasadena
  • a new South Bay-Downtown Los Angeles
  • Montebello Municipal Bus line along Whittier Boulevard
  • Long Beach Transit routes along Long Beach Boulevard, Atlantic Avenue, Seventh Street and Anaheim Street
       The first three or four candidate lines were to have been chosen in the beginning of 1993.

       To further "sell" the public on the ETB concept, the RTD version of the trolleybus would have featured on-board batteries to allow the coaches to run without wires in visually sensitive areas and to turn corners and end-of-line loops without expensive overhead construction.
       Eleven routes were ultimately chosen and the engineering and real estate work was done for the lines' substations. Several manufacturers submitted preliminary bids on the coaches, but trolleybuses were not to be. The first line chosen to be electrified would have run through a residential neighbohood in the Los Feliz district and neighborhood opposition to the imagined dangers of Electro-Magnetic Field emmissions (EMFs) plus the supposed unsightly overhead wires created foes with strong political connections and the ETB project was withdrawn entirely.

  • Potential ETB Routes, 02/10/92

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