Automobile-dependent Los Angeles has struggled to create a balanced mass transit system. It once took pride in the Pacific Electric Railway (PE), a privately owned trolley system created at the start of the 20th century by real estate and railroad mogul Henry E. Huntington. He intended the PE mainly as a vehicle for developing real estate, and it consistently lost money at the fare boxes. Over time, the PE’s “Big Red Cars,” running on fixed rails, could not rival automobiles for convenience in navigating the suburbs, and they increasingly became the cause of traffic jams and collisions on downtown streets. PE management ignored reformers’ repeated demands for system-wide improvements, while suburban taxpayers rejected proposals for a public buyout. The railroad slowly dismantled its lines, and the last Red Car ran in 1961.

By the late 1940s, Angelenos considered cars—and freeways—as necessities. Although these high-speed, multilane, limited-access highways were developed elsewhere, they reached their full flowering in Los Angeles. The prototype Arroyo Seco Parkway (Pasadena Freeway) had opened on the last day of 1939, in time to carry revelers to New Year’s Day festivities in Pasadena. The more-modern Hollywood Freeway (completed 1948) soon carried nearly 200,000 cars daily, prompting comedian Bob Hope to call it “the biggest parking lot in the world.” The four-level downtown freeway “stack” became the city’s most familiar icon of the built environment.

There followed a frenzy of freeway construction, and by the 1970s the system was largely finished. Although these roads unified and defined the physical structure of Los Angeles, their steadily increasing traffic—with an attendant increase in delays and smog-generating pollution—fueled a renewed interest in public transit. Los Angeles voters rejected several proposals before approving a plan for a new system that, in addition to revamping a dysfunctional bus system, would construct several light-rail lines and a subway. In 1993 the state followed suit by creating the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to build and operate such a system.

Work got off to a slow start owing to a tunnel collapse in Hollywood and delays in funding, but by the beginning of the 21st century the MTA had completed a subway between Union Station downtown and North Hollywood and several of the light-rail lines. Additional subway and rail lines were planned or under construction. The MTA also operates transitway buses (which follow dedicated bus roads, thus avoiding traffic problems) and Metro Rapid express bus service along several corridors across the city in addition to its regular city bus service. Los Angeles and neighbouring counties are also served by a patchwork of shuttle and other municipal bus lines. A separate regional commuter rail service, Metrolink, opened in 1992 and has developed into a network of lines connecting Los Angeles, Ventura, San Bernardino, Riverside, Orange, and San Diego counties.

Los Angeles is served by interstate buses and Amtrak intercity passenger rail service, but air travel is by far the most important transport link to outside the region. Los Angeles International Airport (popularly called by its international code, LAX) is one of the world’s largest airports, handling tens of millions of passengers and millions of tons of freight annually. Traffic at LAX keeps rising, but proposals to expand the facility evoke strong opposition from surrounding communities.

In the early 21st century, the combined ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach accounted for nearly two-thirds of the West Coast’s foreign import cargo and, in terms of volume, jointly constituted the third largest harbour in the world after Singapore and Hong Kong. Among the main imports were automobiles, gasoline and jet fuel, steel, footwear, lumber, scrap metal, copper ore, and inorganic compounds. The ports provided thousands of jobs and generated considerable tax revenues.

Communications media

The city’s first newspaper, the Star, began weekly publication in 1851. Three decades later the Los Angeles Times published its first issue. Acquired the following year by Harrison Gray Otis, it became the bible for the city’s boosters, conservative Republicans, and antilabour forces. The paper continued in that mode for another generation under the leadership of Otis’s son-in-law, Harry Chandler. For two additional generations, the Times remained rock-ribbed conservative. While Times scion Otis Chandler held the reins of the paper (1960–80), he transformed it into a more liberal and worldly publication, in the process offending most members of the Chandler family. The family’s control of the paper ended in 2000 with the purchase of its parent company by the Tribune Company.

In 1954 the city had four daily papers, but competition was fierce and their number began to shrink. When the Herald-Examiner ceased publication in 1989, the San Fernando Valley’s Daily News remained the Times’s only major competitor. The Long Beach Press-Telegram, the Pasadena Star News, and other regional papers provide good coverage at the local level. La Opinión is the major Spanish-language daily. More than two dozen of the area’s radio stations broadcast in languages other than English. Several Spanish-language television network affiliates hold their own against English-language stations, and programming is broadcast in at least a dozen other languages on other stations.

Commercial radio broadcasting began in Los Angeles in 1922 and reached a milestone with a coast-to-coast transmission of the Rose Bowl game on January 1, 1926. Today more than two dozen of the area’s radio stations broadcast in languages other than English. The first flickering TV images were transmitted to just five television sets on December 23, 1931. By the 1950s the infant industry was strong enough to challenge the movies for a large share of the entertainment market. Several Spanish-language television network affiliates hold their own against English-language channels, and programming is broadcast in at least a dozen other languages on additional channels.