Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bicycle, bicycle history, bike, cycling, history, infrastructure, Los Angeles, Pasadena, transportation history
The crowd cheered. Bugles rang out. Within a year, Dobbins promised, something similar to Columbus’s short route to the Orient would rise above the hills of the Los Angeles basin. His “Cycleway” was designed to swiftly and conveniently transport people between a pair of key urban centers: the old colonial plaza in Downtown Los Angeles, and Pasadena, the burgeoning, modern suburb to the north that then rivaled the older city in size and ambition. The Dobbins route—which neatly anticipated and presaged the automotive freeways that now stretch across the region—would be a modern marvel. It would boast a state-of-the-art toll-collecting system. It would be elevated fifteen feet above the ground; the limited access would ensure that traffic flowed smoothly. “It can be said,” wrote the Los Angeles Times of the ground breaking, “that none of the new Southern California enterprises will …be more certain of financial success. The wheel must have a path of its own between these two cities.”
via An 1899 Plan to Build A Bike Highway in Los Angeles (And Why It Failed).
Industrialized Cyclist Notepad 