Pacific Electric

The Pacific Electric Railway Company was a privately owned mass transit operator founded in 1901 by Henry E. Huntington and banker Isaias W. Hellman to run electric streetcars, interurban railway cars and buses across Southern California. Organized into northern, eastern, southern and western districts reaching cities such as Pasadena, Riverside, Long Beach and Santa Monica, it grew by the 1920s into the largest electric railway system in the world, operating more than 1,000 miles of track with 2,160 daily trains from its Los Angeles headquarters. Passenger service ended on April 9, 1961, and the Interstate Commerce Commission approved the company's merger into the Southern Pacific Railroad on August 12, 1965, after which much of its former right-of-way was eventually reused by the modern Los Angeles Metro Rail system.