Brief History: Los Angeles Department of Transportation

The history of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation can be traced back to the end of World War I. The automobile was transitioning from a novelty to a necessity, and Los Angeles experienced the most rapid population increase of any major city.

Nowhere were the impacts of the automobile more intensely felt than in Downtown Los Angeles. Immediate innovation and creative solutions were needed, prompting 45-minute parking restrictions in 1919, followed by experimental traffic signals in 1920.

During the 1920’s, the City adopted a Major Traffic Plan and the first simplified Traffic Code anywhere in the nation. However, there was no single City agency to handle traffic problems.

But Ralph T. Dorsey, a traffic engineering pioneer and long-time city resident, emerged as the creative innovator Los Angeles needed at the time. Built around Dorsey, the Bureau of Street Traffic Engineering – a traffic management organization – formed as a unit of the City’s Police Department in June 1930.

The Department of Traffic Engineering was created in 1949 to address post-World War II traffic growth on a more professional and programmatic basis. In June 1953, a change in the City Charter created the Department of Traffic.

But by the mid-1970’s, it was apparent that the complex problems of mobility could not be resolved by traffic control measures alone. An agency with a broader mission was necessary to manage gasoline rationing, car pool efforts, rail transit system goals and environmental quality law compliance.

The Department of Transportation was formed by ordinance on February 25, 1979, and consolidated most transportation-related functions into a single department. Unresolved issues delayed the transfer of other functions to LADOT until 1984.

Since then, the Department of Transportation has evolved and increased services to meet the changing needs of the nation’s second largest and most dynamic city.

For more detail on LADOT’s history and to view era photographs, please read our “Transportation Topics and Tales: Milestones in Transportation History in Southern California” brochure, written by John Fisher, Assistant General Manager of Transportation Operations.