Complaining about traffic is a pastime almost as old as the automobile itself, and no one does it like Angelenos.
As Evan Lovett tells us on L.A. In a Minute, the first recorded traffic jam in Los Angeles history happened 114 years ago.
The lines of parked automobiles blocking Main and Spring streets on July 24, 1909 made front-page news in the L.A. Times, with the paper saying there was hardly room for any cars to pass through the narrow lane between the vehicles on the curb and the streetcar track.
As the article makes clear, this wasn’t the first traffic jam – it was just the breaking point where the local press couldn’t hold their tongues anymore.
At the time, L.A. had more automobiles than any other city, along with streetcars, trolleys, horses, and wagons, all of which had to share the same streets.
Even though there were regulations against leaving cars on the curb for more than 30 minutes, the police’s traffic squad didn’t have enough officers to enforce the laws. Many drivers ditched their cars on the side of main thoroughfares for hours, backing up traffic.
There also weren’t alleyways behind businesses for trucks to load and unload, so everything went in and out the front doors on busy commercial streets downtown. The L.A. Times complained that the trucks on the curb made Third Street “impassable to ordinary traffic.”
More than a century later, we can say definitively that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
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