The Southern California Rapid Transit District (almost always referred to as RTD or rarely as SCRTD) was a public transportation agency established in 1964 to serve the Greater Los Angeles area.

California State Senator Thomas M. Rees (D-Beverly Hills) sponsored the bill that created the RTD, which was meant to correct some deficiencies of the LAMTA,[2][3][4] and took over all of the bus service operated by MTA on November 5, 1964.

RTD replaced the major predecessor public agency, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority, and took over eleven other failing bus companies and services in the Southern California region.

[7] RTD was placed in charge of creating a heavy rail public transportation system for Southern California, and for planning for bus improvements.

[8] RTD eventually discontinued use of the Greyhound bus terminal in the late 1980s, and resumed having connections for buses on the various streets in the downtown area.

RTD operated a small office on Ocean Boulevard, required tickets to be purchased, either there or in advance, and prohibited acceptance of cash payment for buses leaving the stop in front of its Long Beach downtown terminal.

In a 1983 video created by RTD, the District stated its operating service area was larger than that of the transit systems of Miami, Buffalo, Atlanta, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

[10] Two features of transportation in Southern California were the local restriction and the Long Beach South of Willow prohibition.

The local restriction prohibited any private carrier such as Greyhound or Continental Trailways from selling one way or round-trip bus tickets between any two points within the same area that RTD operated.

This required the customer to change buses in Downtown Los Angeles to the bus bound for Valencia, and vice versa on return, but Greyhound could not directly sell a ticket for travel between Long Beach and Los Angeles, unless the person was traveling outside RTD's service area.

Most issued the same transfer blank for every bus on their route, where they just issued a single transfer where the driver punched in the route number, possibly the direction of travel (to prevent people who were taking short trips from getting on a bus going back where they came from without paying for the return trip) and the month and day.

Probably due to the success RTD had in clarifying where its routes went by the renumbering, Long Beach Transit would also change its numbering system as well.

Foothill Transit would also keep the line numbers that it inherited from RTD, and later from the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The map that accompanied the initiative showed ten transit corridors[13] with the Wilshire subway line the "cornerstone" of the system, according to former SCRTD planning director Gary Spivak.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn was the author of the proposition, declaring, "I'm going to put the trains back.

[15] On September 11, 1985, U.S. Representative Henry Waxman added an amendment to that year's Federal Transportation Budget removing all subway construction funds, citing tunneling safety concerns after an entirely unrelated methane explosion in the Fairfax District.

[16] By 1986, due in part to last-minute lobbying by RTD president Nick Patsaouras, a compromise was reached between Waxman and Representative Julian Dixon.

[19] Congressman Waxman then proposed legislation to lift the federal ban on subway construction in the Wilshire Corridor, which passed.

By 2007, this lifting of the ban, along with several other factors such as traffic congestion, lessening racial prejudice, increasingly progressive and environmental attitudes, have rekindled interest in what has come to be known as the Metro Purple Line.

In the wake of local media reports of expensive Italian marble used in its construction, the structure was derisively dubbed the Taj Mahal.

[26] Housed within the building is the Dorothy Gray Transportation Library, a comprehensive collection of transportation-related books, videos, and other materials, said to be one of the largest in the nation.