![]() ![]() Instead of Judge Doom, the perpetrators were car companies. They call it the Great American Streetcar Scandal. And Doom positioned himself to profit from the freeway construction that would be built in the Red Cars' place.īut in real life, some people believe this truly happened. With mass transit out of the way, people would be forced to buy cars. ![]() In "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" Judge Doom used his shell company Cloverleaf Industries to buy out the Red Car system. got there was the subject of conspiracy theories. The Red and Yellow Cars ceased service by the early 1960s, and cars reigned supreme. Who was behind the Great American Streetcar Scandal? ![]() ![]() "It was the system of choice to get around before cars really became the institution they became in Los Angeles," he says. "He had huge amounts of real estate, and he ran his consolidated Red Car system out to the tracts of land that he owned."Īnd there was no better way to get home buyers to move to then-remote and relatively inaccessible areas that he was developing, like Redondo Beach and Huntington Beach.Īlthough the rails proved hugely popular with everyone. "These were essentially real estate development tools consolidated by magnate Henry Huntington," says Marshall. Its true heyday was between 19, but unlike today's Metro system, they weren't public entities. "It's farther than even the most ambitious Metro plans you see today of what's going to happen in, like, 2050 or 2060 with the current wave of construction."Ĭreative Commons This map shows the former layout of the Pacific Electric railway system, known as the Red Cars. "It was the most extensive urban rail transit system in America, if not the world," says historian Colin Marshall. The Red Car network had veins that connected far-flung stretches of Southern California – Santa Monica to San Bernardino, Newport Beach to Van Nuys, Pasadena to Long Beach and more.īetween it and the more local Yellow Car system, riders could ride on the rails on one of these streetcars to almost anywhere they wanted to. What was fact and fiction about mass transit in the movie? The Golden Age of the Red Cars Some say there was even a conspiracy at work to make it happen, just like in "Roger Rabbit" (but without the cartoons). In real life, the Red Car system did fall by the wayside as automobiles took over the roads. Traffic jams will be a thing of the past." "Eight lanes of shimmering cement running from here to Pasadena!" he monologues in the film's climax. In their place, Doom plans to profit on the new project being developed by the city: freeways. On the surface, it's a bright, noir comedy about cartoon actor Roger Rabbit who's wanted for murder.īut there's an important plot point that has a basis in history: Roger is framed as an elaborate scheme by villain Judge Doom to demolish L.A.'s mass transit trolley system known as the Red Cars. The movie will be preserved this year in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress along with 24 other important and influential films. Los Angeles isn't a cartoon, but it is a main character in the 1988 film "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" ![]()
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