Angels Flight
Angels Flight is a historic narrow-gauge funicular railway in the Bunker Hill district of Downtown Los Angeles, California. It has two funicular cars, named Olivet and Sinai, that run in opposite directions on a shared cable. The tracks cover a distance of over a vertical gain of.
The funicular has operated on two different sites, using the same cars and station elements. The original location, with trackage along the side of Third Street Tunnel and connecting Hill Street and Olive Street, operated from 1901 until 1969, when its site was cleared for redevelopment.
The current location opened half a block south of the original location in 1996, mid-block between 3rd and 4th Streets, with tracks connecting Hill Street and California Plaza. It was shut down in 2001 following a fatal accident and reopened in 2010. It was closed again during June and July 2011, and then again after a [|minor derailment incident] in September 2013. The investigation of this latter incident led to the discovery of potentially serious safety problems in both the design and the operation of the funicular.
Before the 2013 service suspension, the cost of a one-way ride was 50 cents. Although it was marketed primarily as a tourist novelty, it was frequently used by local workers to travel between the Downtown Historic Core and Bunker Hill. In 2015, the executive director of the nearby REDCAT arts center described the railroad as an important "economic link," and there was pressure for the city to fund and re-open the railroad. After safety enhancements were completed, Angels Flight reopened for public service in August 2017, charging $1 for a one-way ride. In June 2025, citing increased operating costs, the fare was increased to $1.50 for a one-way fare and $3 for a round trip fare.
History
Original location
Angels Flight funicular was built as the "Los Angeles Incline Railway" in 1901, with financing from J. W. Eddy. It began at the west corner of Hill Street at Third, and ran for two blocks uphill to its Olive Street terminus. The service consisted of two vermillion "boarding stations" and two cars, named Sinai and Olivet, alternately pulled up the steep incline by metal cables powered by engines at the upper Olive Street station. The downhill car descended by gravity alone. An archway labeled "Angels Flight" greeted passengers on the Hill Street entrance, which became the official name of the railway in 1912 when the Funding Company of California purchased it from its founders.The original Angels Flight was a conventional funicular, with both cars connected to the same haulage cable and no track brakes in case of cable failure; a separate safety cable would be activated in a break. It operated for 68 years with a good safety record, with three notable incidents: a derailment with a single female passenger in 1913, a sleeping salesman being dragged several yards by a car in 1937, and a sailor walking up the tracks being killed in 1943.
A total of seven companies operated the railroad at its original location. In 1912 Colonel Eddy sold it to the Funding Company of Los Angeles, which sold it to Continental Securities Company in 1914. Robert W. Moore, an engineer for Continental Securities, and the railway's general manager since 1914, purchased the line in 1946. In 1952, Moore retired, and sold Angels Flight to Lester B. Moreland, an electrical engineer with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and Byron Linville, a prominent banker at Security First National Bank. Moore had gotten to know Moreland and Linville over his many years and believed the pair were earnest about preserving the history of the railway and capably maintaining its operation. The following year Moreland's family bought out Linville's interest and became sole stockholder. In 1962 condemnation proceedings instigated by Los Angeles forced Moreland to sell to the city, whose redevelopment agency hired Oliver & Williams Elevator Company to run the line until it was shut down on May 18, 1969. Dismantling began the following day, and the cars were hauled off to a warehouse. The railroad's arch, station house, drinking fountain, and other artifacts were taken to an outdoor storage yard in Gardena, California.
In November 1952, the Beverly Hills Parlor of the Native Daughters of the Golden West erected a plaque to commemorate fifty years of service by the railway. The plaque reads:
In 1962, the city's new Cultural Heritage Board designated five sites it regarded as "threatened" as Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments, with Angel's Flight listed as No. 4.
Dismantling
The railway was closed on May 17 or May 18, 1969, when the Bunker Hill area underwent a controversial total redevelopment, which destroyed and displaced a community of almost 22,000 working-class families who were renting rooms in architecturally significant but run-down buildings; the demolished residences were replaced with a contemporary mixed-use district of high-rise commercial buildings and modern apartment and condominium complexes. Both of the Angels Flight cars, Sinai and Olivet, were then placed in storage at 1200 S. Olive Street, Los Angeles. This was the location of Sid and Linda Kastner's United Business Interiors. At this location, the Kastners maintained "The Bandstand," a private museum. The Bandstand featured antique, coin-operated musical instruments where one of the cars was on display in the museum. Olivet was stored in the garage of the building. They were stored at this location for 27 years at no charge in anticipation of the railway's restoration and reopening, which according to the city's Redevelopment Agency, was originally slated to take place within two years.Reconstruction
After being stored for 27 years, the funicular was rebuilt and reopened by the newly formed Angels Flight Railway Foundation on February 24, 1996, half a block south of the original site. Although the original cars, Sinai and Olivet, were used, a new track and haulage system was designed and built—a redesign which had unfortunate consequences five years later. As rebuilt, the funicular retained its general length and approximately 33% grade.As with the original line, car movement was controlled by an operator inside the upper station house, who was responsible for visually determining that the track and vehicles were clear for movement, closing the platform gates, starting the cars moving, monitoring the operation of the funicular cars, observing car stops at both stations, and collecting fares from passengers. The cars themselves did not carry any staff members. Angels Flight was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 13, 2000.
2001 accident
On February 1, 2001, Angels Flight had a serious accident when car Sinai, approaching the upper station, instead rolled downhill uncontrollably, and collided into Olivet near the lower station. The accident killed an 83-year-old man, injured his wife and seven others, and caused serious damage to the funicular.The National Transportation Safety Board conducted an investigation into the accident, and determined that the probable cause was the improper design and construction of the funicular drive, and the failure of the various regulatory bodies to ensure that the railway system conformed to initial safety design specifications and known funicular safety standards. The NTSB further remarked that the company that designed and built the drive, control, braking, and haul systems, Lift Engineering/Yantrak, was no longer in business, and that the whereabouts of the company's principal was unknown.
Unlike the original design, which had a safety cable, track brakes, and the cars connected to one-another to counter-balance their loads, the new arrangement used a separate haulage system for each car, with its drive motor connected to its service brake by a gear train. When Sinai's gear train failed it had no service brake or balancing load, either of which would have prevented the accident. Compounding this, emergency brakes that acted on the rim of each haulage drum were inoperative on both cars due to inadequate maintenance. The NTSB was unable to identify another funicular worldwide that operated without either a safety cable or track brakes.
Records indicate that the emergency brake had been inoperative for 17 to 26 months following the mis-installation of a normally closed hydraulic solenoid valve in place of a normally open one, which had burned out.
During the period that the emergency braking system was not operating, the braking system was tested daily – using a faulty methodology which engaged the service brake and emergency brake simultaneously, leaving no way to tell if the emergency brake was functioning without looking at the brake pads or hydraulic pressure gauges during the test. It was always performed with the Sinai car traveling uphill, which meant that when the power was cut and the brakes applied, Sinais momentum caused the car to continue moving uphill a short distance and then to roll back from gravity, jerking the cable tight.
If the emergency brakes had been functional, they would have caught the car when the cable snapped tight, but without them the force of the daily jerk caused by the test was directed through the gear train's spline and then to the service brake. In addition, it was found that the original design called for the spline to be made of AISI 1018 steel on one drawing and of AISI 8822 steel on a different one, but it is unlikely that this ambiguity in the design contributed to the accident. However, regular analysis of gear box oil-samples was discontinued in May 1998, despite the company contracted to perform the tests advising that the rising particulate level in the samples warranted more frequent testing.
Besides the design failures in the haulage system, the Angels Flight setup was also criticized by the NTSB for the lack of gates on the cars and the absence of a parallel walkway for emergency evacuation.