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.

[4] After safety enhancements were completed, Angels Flight reopened for public service in August 2017, charging $1 for a one-way ride (50 cents for TAP card users).

[10][11][12][13] 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.

It operated for 68 years with a good safety record,[15] 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.

[17] 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.

[18] 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:[19] Built in 1901 by Colonel J. W. Eddy, lawyer, engineer, and friend of President Abraham Lincoln, Angels Flight is said to be the world's shortest incorporated railway.

[2] The railway was closed on May 17[20] or May 18, 1969,[21][22] 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.

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.

[15] 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.

[15] 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.

The death and injuries could have been avoided if any one of the following had taken place:[24][dead link‍] On November 1, 2008, both of the repaired and restored Angels Flight cars, Sinai and Olivet, were put back on their tracks, and on January 16, 2009, testing began on the railway.

[27][failed verification] Finally, on March 10, 2010, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved the safety certificate for the railroad to begin operating again.

[32] It connected the Historic Core and Broadway commercial district with the hilltop Bunker Hill California Plaza urban park and the Museum of Contemporary Art – MOCA.

On June 10, 2011, the California Public Utilities Commission ordered Angels Flight to immediately cease operations due to wear on its cars' fifteen-year-old wheels.

These enhancements were made by ACS Infrastructure Development and SENER through an agreement with Angels Flight Railway Foundation, in exchange for a share of the funicular's revenue over the next three decades.

[37] Angels Flight's earliest appearance on film is believed to be Their Ups and Downs (1914), starring Eddie Lyons, Victoria Forde, and Lee Moran.

(1916), All Jazzed Up (1920), The Impatient Maiden (1932), The Unfaithful (1940), Hollow Triumph (1948), M (1951), The Turning Point (1952), Cry of the Hunted (1953), Bunker Hill: A Tale of Urban Renewal (1956), The Exiles (1961), The Money Trap (1965),[38] Angel's Flight (1965),[39] and They Came to Rob Las Vegas (1968).

[citation needed] It appeared as a landmark rather than an active filming location in the Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948), Criss Cross (1949),[38] The Glenn Miller Story (1954), Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Indestructible Man (1956), and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (1963).

[49][46] Angels Flight appears as an interactive component of the video games Tony Hawk's American Wasteland (2005)[citation needed] and L.A. Noire (2011).

It is used by characters in Raymond Chandler's[51] The King in Yellow (1938) and The High Window (1942); in Michael Connelly's 1999 Angels Flight; and in Nick Carter's 1967 The Red Guard.

[52][53] The funicular is referenced in "L.A. (My Town)" by Four Tops (1970),[54] "Strange Season" by Michael Penn (1992), and "Aquatic Mouth Dance" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers (2022).