
Ghost Streets of Los Angeles - ingve
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2015/12/ghost-streets-of-los-angeles.html
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greggman
These are all ex-railroad tracks.

I wish this documentary was available for streaming somewhere but if you're
into this stuff it's an amazing documentary and I can highly recommend it.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiLGui8fxiw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiLGui8fxiw)

It has some bonus materials as well including going around with a P.E. history
buff as he points out some of these places.

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iNerdier
Why would a country like the US with plenty of money get rid of train tracks
when other countries are building or upgrading theirs? It seems like a really
strange thing to do when you have a large metropolitan area which clearly has
a need for mass transit?

~~~
greggman
The documentary mentioned 2 things.

1\. The trains never made a profit past 1929 (the great depression). I'm not
sure if they said why.

2\. The train companies had made deals to maintain the roads. As cars got more
popular that made maintenance too expensive and provided an incentive to
switch to buses which would transfer maintenance of the roads to the city.

Of course I agree that it was shortsighted of the city to let the trains go.
They probably should have run them themselves or made some new deals or
something. Now they're paying billions to build new lines and they take
forever to build. The purple line that goes down Wilshire is supposed to take
until 2035! to be finished down to UCLA :(

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Line_Extension](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Line_Extension)

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pinot
Trains. There's similar scars in San Francisco. Potrero Hill & Mission
District particularly.

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kristopolous
There's a site where you can see this really clearly,
[http://www.historicaerials.com/](http://www.historicaerials.com/) ... it's a
pretty bad site but the only one I know that actually presents the data in
this way.

The first image:
[http://historicaerials.com:?layer=T1963&zoom=16&lat=34.09750...](http://historicaerials.com:?layer=T1963&zoom=16&lat=34.09750190321817&lon=-118.35163593292235)
... if you go to the compare drop-down, select slide, then do 2012, you can
clearly see this.

~~~
jsanford
Were you aware that Google Earth has a "History" icon that opens a slider for
historic aerial data? It's pretty fantastic.

One of my pasttimes is to compare different map sources/times for the same
location.

I wrote a python2 tool that parses any URL like the one you gave, and outputs
links to the geo location at many map providers:

[https://github.com/jamessanford/geourl](https://github.com/jamessanford/geourl)

~~~
pinot
Well now I have to explorer SF in 3D in 1938. This might take a while.

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mhartl
For me this article contained a Ghost Address: the Ogden Drive swimming pool
highlighted in the article is located just a few buildings south of a place I
lived for four months in 2007. It was only four months because I unexpectedly
applied to and was accepted by Y Combinator, and thus had to move to the Bay
Area on short notice. Nevertheless, I walked past that building dozens of
times—never seeing the oddly shaped pool, never knowing I was walking past a
ghost.

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ZanyProgrammer
The Bay Area too, if you know where to look
[http://imgur.com/4kBUHie](http://imgur.com/4kBUHie)

Next stop Monte Vista!

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whyenot
That is because foothill expressway was a railroad line until the early
1960s(?). You can still see the old train station in downtown los altos (it's
now a high end French bakery).

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
San Jose also has a crapload of abandoned industrial trackage, some of which
has gone to BART, some completely abandoned, some trails, and a very small
amount still in use. Once you know what to look for, the scars of rail ROWs
are everywhere.

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Animats
Former railroad tracks. Duh.

Land ownership often reflects where railroad tracks were. When the tracks are
removed, that doesn't mean that the land becomes part of the neighboring lots.

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cusack
Another in SF, heading southwest for several blocks from the intersection of
Harrison/22nd in the Mission

2901 22nd St San Francisco CA

