Emerging Voices: Powering Sustainable Transit in the U.S.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, Los Angeles, CA, had the largest urban rail system in the world, with over 1,000 miles of electric street car tracks spanning across four counties (1). Coverage stretched from San Fernando in the north to Newport Beach in the south, all the way to the San Gabriel Mountains in the east, making nearly the entire city accessible by rail. However, the city began tearing up the tracks and replacing them with highways in the 1950s. Today, only about a hundred miles of rail remain operational.

To those earning their living in the automotive industry, this decision, not uncommon in cities across mid-century America, was a life-sustaining infrastructural transition. To the millions of Angelenos who commute every day, this might seem like an epic tragedy. Today, Los Angeles boasts some of the most congested roads and expansive urban sprawl in the U.S. Unsurprisingly, many Americans are looking at other countries around the globe with their functional, clean, and efficient public transit with envy.

The contemporary discussion over what the U.S.’s transit infrastructure should look like comes at the same time that scientists, engineers, and governments are working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and mitigate climate change. A crucial part of this transition will be cutting emissions from individual vehicles. Although electric vehicles (EVs) eliminate direct emissions, this solution is individualized, piecemeal, and contains many inherent mechanical and logistical problems — including limited capacity, long charging times, varying sustainability of the supplied electricity, and strained supply chains for crucial raw materials — not to mention the fact that they still leave you stuck in traffic. Still, even in the U.S., many cities are taking significant steps to provide sustainable and efficient transportation options.

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