page_title: Arroyo Seco (Los Angeles County)
section_title: Transportation corridor
hierarchical_section_title: Arroyo Seco (Los Angeles County) / History / Transportation corridor
caption_attribution_description: English: Southern entrance to the Arroyo Seco Bicycle Path, in the Highland Park district of NE Los Angeles. Beside the Arroyo Seco (creek channel) - in Los Angeles County, California.
context_page_description: The Arroyo Seco, meaning "dry stream" in Spanish, is a 24.9-mile-long seasonal river, canyon, watershed, and cultural area in Los Angeles County, California. The area was explored by Gaspar de Portolà who named the stream Arroyo Seco as this canyon had the least water of any they had seen. During this exploration he met the Chief Hahamog-na of the Tongva Indians.
context_section_description: Dating back to the original Tongva residents of the area, the Arroyo Seco canyon has always served as a major transportation corridor.  Today it links downtown Los Angeles with Pasadena, the west San Gabriel Valley and the San Gabriel Mountains.
   By 1886 the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley Railroad  had been established from Downtown Los Angeles with a grand wooden trestle that cut a straight line crossing from the west side to the east. The wooden trestle was replaced with the Santa Fe Arroyo Seco Railroad Bridge. Eventually this line would hook up with rail lines built from the east to create the cross-country course of the Santa Fe Railroad. For local commutes, an electric traction trolley was put in and operated by the Pacific Electric Railway, a Henry E. Huntington enterprise, which ran the "Red Cars" from the upper Arroyo and Pasadena through the San Gabriel Valley into Los Angeles and many points beyond. The lower Arroyo Seco was served by the Los Angeles Railway "Yellow Car" lines.
   In 1900 Horace Dobbins, Mayor of Pasadena, opened his innovative California Cycleway, an elevated wood structure with a flat planked surface that would allow bicyclers to travel from Pasadena to Los Angeles avoiding the uncertain schedules of the early trains. Dobbins was only able to build a two-mile portion of the cycleway from the Green Hotel to Raymond Hill before competition from the railroads and the growing popularity of the horseless carriage undermined the project. Present day cycling activists are reviving a vision and plan for a dedicated bikeway from Pasadena to Los Angeles. The Arroyo Seco bicycle path now runs from Highland Park to South Pasadena.
  In 1913 the Colorado Street Bridge was dedicated. This structure curves across the Arroyo accessing Eagle Rock, Glendale, and the San Fernando Valley. During the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression of the 1930s, the bridge was a jumping off point for many committing suicide, whereby it received the ignoble name of "Suicide bridge." By the 1980s the bridge fell into disrepair as chunks of concrete dropped from its face to the armory parking lot in the Arroyo below. After the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge failure in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the Colorado Street Bridge was closed as a precautionary measure. Eventually assistance from the Federal Bridge Repair and Replacement Fund and other local governmental agency discretionary funds provided funding for the complete restoration and seismic retrofit of the bridge. The total project budget amounted to $24 million, and the Colorado Street Bridge was reopened on Dec. 13, 1993, on time and on budget.
caption: Arroyo Seco bicycle path
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "2048", "Image ImageLength": "1536", "Image Make": "SAMSUNG", "Image Model": "SPH-M900", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Ver  1.0.2", "Image DateTime": "2011:08:01 17:15:49", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "GPS GPSLatitudeRef": "N", "GPS GPSLatitude": "[34, 5, 53]", "GPS GPSLongitudeRef": "W", "GPS GPSLongitude": "[118, 12, 11]", "GPS GPSAltitudeRef": "1", "GPS GPSAltitude": "0", "Image GPSInfo": "234", "Image ExifOffset": "380", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/1000", "EXIF FNumber": "14/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2011:08:01 17:15:49", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2011:08:01 17:15:49", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "1/1000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "3", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "0", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "18/5", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2048", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1536", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}