I. Description of Wilshire Blvd
In every city, there are always streets or main avenues that are considered the most populated or crucial to public transportation. Wilshire Boulevard has been considered the backbone of Los Angeles, or even the "Fifth Avenue of the West":
(Figure 1: the plan for Wilshire in the early 1900's)
It is one of the most traveled boulevards in California, running 16 miles from Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles east to west and ending at Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. Wilshire Boulevard connects five of Los Angeles' major business districts, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, and consists of at least three famous "miles": Miracle Mile, the stretch between Fairfax and La Brea, Park Mile, and Millionaire's Mile. Its importance to multiple portions of the community lends to its width, which stretches to at least 4 lanes all along the boulevard, with its widest portions being in Westwood and Holmby Hills. Two of its intersections, at Westwood and Veteran (see fig. B), are considered the busiest in Los Angeles. For all these reasons, Wilshire is fundamental to connecting the West Side of Los Angeles to the East "downtown". At the same time, it is one of the most congested and delayed streets of all Los Angeles.
II. History of Wilshire Blvd
One of the largest contributing factors to Wilshire's present-day traffic lies in the history and approach to transportation in the twentieth century, beginning with the advent of the automobile and the streetcar.
(Figure 2: Streetcar lines extended well over the Los Angeles County)
Streetcars were beneficial to poorer neighborhoods as the first mode of public transit in the 1940's, but in those days of cheap gasoline and wide-open streets, it made more sense to dr ...