This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars and this is Eric Mollensky. Hi, I'm Eric.

Eric is an independent producer in New York City. Brooklyn of course like most public radio producers here.

But before Brooklyn, Eric spent 10 years in Los Angeles. Yeah, when I was in LA, I used to hear this story pretty often and this story, it's almost like a fable.

LA had this amazing transportation system called the Red Car and it was this trolley that covered the entire city.

And then after World War II, either Ford or GM, Botha Red Car had it dismantled and then built this horrible freeway system that created the sprawl and gridlock of today.

What the hell is a freeway? Eight lanes of shimmering cement running from here to pass a dinner, smooth, safe, fast, traffic jams will be a thing of the past.

And you know, and for some of her story, I thought well that that sounds familiar. It must be true. I feel like I've definitely heard this story before.

That's because it's the plot of who framed Roger Rapid.

Come on, Eddie Rayson says the human. Or at least it's the evil scheme that Christopher Lloyd reveals at the end of the movie.

Come on. Nobody's gonna drive this lousy freeway when they can take the red car for a neck-up.

Oh, they'll drive. They'll have to. You see, I bought the red car so I could dismantle it.

What the hell?

This isn't totally ridiculous. Remember the plot of Chinatown where Los Angeles mogul was stealing water from Northern California? That actually happened.

Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown.

As I learned more about the history of LA, I learned that the red car was actually not the victim of a massive conspiracy.

The red car actually was the conspiracy. The red car helped create the sprawl in the gridlock.

To understand how this all came about, we have to go way back to the mid-19th century.

A boy named Henry Huntington was born into a middle-class family in upstate New York. But he has a very wealthy uncle named Collis Huntington.

Collis has no kids and he sort of latches on to his nephew. And I mean, I assume you must see something in Henry.

You know, he thinks his kid can be molded into a businessman and he's right. And so Collis takes little Henry under his wing.

He teaches him everything about the family business, which is railroads.

Jump to 1900, Collis dies, and Henry thinks he's going to inherit the company Southern Pacific.

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