TRANSITNo topic in Los Angeles transit history generates more misinformation per square foot than the city's underground infrastructure. A persistent folklore of vast abandoned subway tunnels, secret presidential railcar passages, and hidden Red Car depots has accumulated around the real but more modest history of tunnels actually constructed beneath Los Angeles. This article distinguishes the documented historical record from myth, examining what was actually built, what was planned but never built, and why the urban mythology of underground LA has proven so resilient.
What Was Actually Built: The Documented Record
Los Angeles has several documented historic tunnels with transit or infrastructure origins. None of them constitute an "abandoned subway system" in any meaningful sense, but each has a genuine history worth documenting.
The Second Street Tunnel (1924)
The Second Street Tunnel, running beneath Bunker Hill between Second Street and Hill Street, is the oldest significant vehicular tunnel in Los Angeles. Built in 1924, it was designed for automobile and streetcar traffic through the Bunker Hill neighborhood. The Los Angeles Railway (LARY) Yellow Cars used the tunnel for surface streetcar operations—not subway operations, since the tunnel remained at street level within its portal and served surface-grade light rail, not a grade-separated rapid transit function.
The Second Street Tunnel remains in use today as an automobile tunnel, its 1924 concrete construction largely intact. It is visible and accessible to any motorist driving through downtown Los Angeles. It is not "abandoned" and it did not serve a rapid transit function.
The Hill Street Tunnel (Proposed, Not Built)
Extensive tunnel proposals for downtown Los Angeles were developed by the LARY and by various city planning commissions through the 1920s and 1930s. The most developed was the Hill Street rapid transit tunnel proposal of the 1920s, which envisioned a grade- separated streetcar subway beneath Hill Street connecting the commercial core to residential neighborhoods to the north. This proposal was studied, appeared in multiple planning documents, and was never funded or constructed.
The Hill Street tunnel is frequently cited in urban mythology as an "abandoned tunnel" that exists beneath the street. It does not exist. A proposal is not an artifact; planning documents describing unbuilt infrastructure do not constitute physical evidence of construction.
The Belmont Hill Tunnel
The Belmont Hill Tunnel is the most frequently cited "lost tunnel" in Los Angeles mythology, and it is the closest to genuine. LARY built a short tunnel section in the Belmont Hills area to connect streetcar lines on different grades. The tunnel was short—less than 500 feet—and was a surface-grade streetcar facility, not a rapid transit subway. It was abandoned when the LARY streetcar lines were discontinued and the area redeveloped.
Whether remnant structural elements persist beneath the Belmont area is a matter of archaeological investigation rather than transit history. The Metropolitan Water District and various utility contractors have documented underground structures in the area during excavation, but these documents do not support the mythology of an extensive intact tunnel network.
The "Subway to the Sea" That Was Never Built
The most persistent transit myth in Los Angeles is the "subway to the sea"—the claim that a subway from downtown Los Angeles to the Pacific Ocean was planned, partially constructed, and abandoned. This myth has several distinct components, each worth examining separately.
The planned extension: There was absolutely a genuine plan to extend the Metro B Line (Red Line) westward under Wilshire Boulevard to Santa Monica—the "subway to the sea" in the planning sense. This plan was explicitly blocked by state legislation in the late 1980s that prohibited the use of Proposition A funds for subway construction west of Western Avenue due to methane gas safety concerns. The legislation did not stop a subway that was under construction; it prevented a subway that had been planned from being funded. This restriction, and the history of the LACTC's planning around it, is documented in the LACTC and B Line history.
The "constructed and abandoned" version: Variations of the myth claim that tunnel boring had begun on the Wilshire westward extension before the legislation stopped it, leaving abandoned tunnel sections beneath Wilshire. LACMTA engineering records and the construction history of the Red Line do not support this claim. Tunnel boring on Phase 1 was conducted in the downtown core between Union Station and MacArthur Park; no boring occurred west of Western Avenue before the legislative restriction was enacted.
The actual "subway to the sea" is now under construction as the Metro D Line (Purple Line) Extension, using Measure M funds rather than the Proposition A funds that were restricted. Phase 3 will deliver the Westwood/UCLA station, bringing rail transit to within four miles of the Pacific Ocean.
The Metro B Line Construction: What Was Actually Excavated
The Metro B Line's construction is the most significant underground excavation in Los Angeles history, creating 16.4 miles of tunnel beneath the city. The construction history provides context for understanding what actually exists underground and why some locations generate confusion.
Construction on Phase 1 (Union Station to MacArthur Park/Westlake, 1986–1993) used a combination of cut-and-cover construction (digging a trench, building the structure, and covering it over—leaving the surface largely unchanged) and tunnel boring machine (TBM) operations for deeper segments. The cut-and-cover segments along First, Second, and Third Streets required extensive utility relocation and created surface disruption visible for years.
The Hollywood extension (Phase 2B, 2C) used TBM technology through the Hollywood Hills, where cut-and-cover was not feasible due to depth. These tunnels are the deepest on the B Line, with the Hollywood/Vine station platform at approximately 80 feet below grade— deep enough to require high-speed escalators that are among the longest in the Metro system.
Angels Flight: The Funicular That Was Not a Subway
Angels Flight, the funicular railway on Bunker Hill, is sometimes included in accounts of "LA's lost transit." Angels Flight opened in 1901, was removed in 1969 as part of Bunker Hill urban renewal, and was rebuilt and reopened in 1996 (later requiring closure for safety modifications). It is currently operational.
Angels Flight is not a subway or transit tunnel in any sense—it is a short-distance funicular connecting two street levels on a steep hillside. Its history is genuinely interesting but belongs to the category of historic urban infrastructure rather than "abandoned transit systems."
Why the Mythology Persists
The persistence of underground mythology in Los Angeles reflects a genuine historical irony: a city that destroyed an extensive surface transit system (the Pacific Electric and LARY) and replaced it with freeways has left residents with a sense that something significant was lost underground. The mythology fills the gap between the extensive transit planning history and the relatively modest actual underground construction record prior to the Metro Rail era.
Urban exploration communities have documented numerous underground infrastructure elements in Los Angeles—utility tunnels, storm drain systems, historic building basement connections—that have no transit function but are sometimes mischaracterized as abandoned transit infrastructure in social media circulation. The city's geology (alluvial basin, variable water table, methane gas zones) has always made underground construction expensive and technically challenging, which is why the Pacific Electric operated almost entirely on surface and elevated structures rather than subways.
For a historically grounded account of how Los Angeles actually planned and built underground transit infrastructure, the LACTC and B Line history provides the primary source record. The broader institutional context is described on the editorial biography page.