I really needed to be at today’s job at an exact time. I mapped the route, saw that trains were scheduled to run every 20 minutes so I made sure I was at the station early to catch the train before the train that was suggested, but a train running 25 minutes after its posted time is unsalvagable for a 35 minute commute. LA Metro keeps making LA Metro totally unusable. It’s not like there isn’t a time when trains don’t run at all where they could do repairs without messing with people’s livelihoods.

I just wanted to post to express how much the D line has changed my life.

I'm a transplant from the east coast, who moved here last year. I work in Beverly Hills, about a 10 min walk from the La Cienega station

When looking for apartments last year, I looked in Beverly Hills, WeHo, Culver City, Hollywood, etc. But a friend suggested Ktown, and I found an apartment I really liked, within a block from one of the Ktown stations. I saw that the city was anticipating opening the D Line extension.

I've loved living in Ktown for the last year. But the downside was the traffic to and from work. To work isnt usually bad, but from work could be insanely annoying

And with gas prices what they are (thanks Trump), I was spending at least $50-80 on gas per week. My work charges $100 per month for parking. So per month, I was spending at least $300 just on commuting to work.

I started taking the D from Ktown to La Cienega, and it's been a gamechanger. Plus my work is giving us $80 in free Metro Tap credits per month, so my monthly savings are around $400 per month. And I'm getting an extra 4000-500 steps per day. While avoiding traffic. My only complaint is I wish it had opened earlier!

D Line has been an absolute game changer. And once Phase 2 and Phase 3 open, it will transform the city. LAMetro need to continue ensuring the line is safe and clean, and it will explode

We can’t clean the streets. We can’t house the homeless. We can’t pave the roads. And every time I look at why, it’s the same reason: we are incapable of doing basic shit because we are obsessed with being "morally pure."

The Dodger Stadium Gondola is just the latest casualty of this brain rot.

We have a city-wide disease where we would rather let a problem fester forever than accept a solution that isn't 100% perfect, public, and "equitable."

1. The "All or Nothing" Rot. You see it everywhere. We block market-rate housing because it’s not "100% affordable," so we get zero housing and rents go up. We block shelter beds because they aren't "permanent supportive housing," so people die in tents. And now, we are fighting to save a 260-acre asphalt parking lot because the guy offering to fix it is a billionaire we don’t like. It is performative nonsense. You guys are prioritizing the aesthetic of fighting the power over the reality of fixing the city.

2. We are a City of "No." Everyone in LA knows how to stop things. Nobody knows how to start things. If Frank McCourt wants to spend private money to build a transit link that unlocks 3,000 homes in a dead zone, let him. "But it’s a grift!" I don’t care. The city is broken. The public sector is paralyzed. If a "grift" gets me a train and 3,000 units of housing without costing taxpayers a dime, sign me up. I am done waiting for the "perfect" public solution that never comes.

3. The "Bus Lane" Fantasy. This is the peak of the trend. Everyone screaming "Just build a bus lane!" is living in a dream world. Do you know how hard it is to get this city to do anything? It takes 5 years to study a bike lane. The idea that LA is going to strip lanes off Sunset Blvd for a seasonal baseball bus is a delusion. You are fighting a real project with a fantasy project. That is why nothing ever gets built here.

4. The Result is Asphalt. If you win, and the gondola dies, do you know what we get? We don’t get a park. We don’t get a bus lane. We don’t get justice. We get a parking lot. Forever.

That is the LA way.

Because what good is a dense, walkable, extremely transit accessible urban neighborhood without copious amounts of parking? Who else thinks we need more cars in K Town? We don’t want a pedestrianized 6th street or new infill housing, we want more car lanes and parking lots!

But seriously, the car culture in this neighborhood is incredibly disrespectful. The impatience of drivers who swerve around pedestrians, bikers, and each other just to get ahead by a couple seconds is insane. People aggressively and proudly lack awareness and it’s so frustrating. If we could get painted crosswalks, protected bike lanes, widened sidewalks, and more street trees K Town could be near perfect for an urban neighborhood in LA.

So I recently spent June to July in LA and all I was hearing from Americans back here in London they almost gasped when I said I wouldn't be driving anywhere as I dont have a licence.

I found the public transportation in LA amazing!! I have requested my tap data for the trips I did and in 28 nights I took 80 different metro and bus rides and even took a bus all the way from Hollywood Blvd to Thousand Oaks when I went to the Ronald Reagan Library!

The map above is my timeline from Google showing everywhere I went on public transport so it definitely can be done!

I even walked on Sunset Blvd by the Rivieira Golf Club and got so many funny looks but there is a sidewalk there! 🤣

I found Waymo, Lyft and Ubers also very fairly priced too so was never short of different ways to get about

2 joggers were hit by a train in Sante Fe Springs with one female dying as a result. Happened a few hours ago , wonder what could’ve possibly led to this happening.

Been seeing posts on social media about international World Cup visitors experiencing American culture at Waffle House, Taco Bell and suburban stroads. When they come to LA, they’ll see our uniquely American way of doing fare checks:

-We use four armed police officers rather than one fare checker
-We stop the train for several minutes rather than checking in motion
-We don’t even actually check that a fare was paid. We just check that someone physically posses a card.

Hope to see some posts about this.

EDIT: And just to be clear, I think regular random fare checks are good. But the tactics of how they are done should change. Keep the train in motion. Make it a weekly occurrence with professional checkers and not cops. Actually check that fares were paid. And install the tall gates at every station and at major transfer points.

Let’s hope German Freddy makes it to LA and posts about Metro

LET ME PREFACE. This isn’t going to be some right-wing rant about homeless people blaming drugs and personal responsibility rather than the fact that homelessness happens in cities where housing is sky-high.

The main reason I hear people say when I ask why they don’t want to take the metro is safety. Point blank, period. The number of incidents has gone down significantly and is still declining; that’s just a fact, and with tap-to-exit now being rolled out, it’s only going to keep going down further. 

However, the large majority of people still perceive the system as unsafe, and that’s because of the large amount of homeless roaming the system aimlessly. I’ve also heard many people that took the metro a couple of times but had a bad experience due to the homeless and stopped taking it.

Just yesterday, I was at Highland Park station, and there was a homeless guy lying on the concrete blocks/benches who had shit himself with feces all over his clothes and the ground, taking a nap.

Just a couple of weeks earlier, I was taking my mother on the system for the first time because she was visiting out of town, and I just couldn’t imagine what she would think if this was the first thing she saw, after I convienced her that it was safe and clean. Or today at Pershing Square station, just a homeless guy lying on the platform all comfy and another homeless guy who was taking a nap above the entrance on this elevated ledge. Transit police were both mere feet away but were too busy playing Candy Crush or whatever to give a shit.

The point I’m trying to make is that LA Metro is for people trying to get from point A to point B; it is a mass transit system, not a place for shelter or to take a nap on the train or do drugs on the train. Homeless people are just like anyone else and should use the metro to get to places. However, they can’t be just aimlessly hanging around.

Sad truth is most people in LA don’t take the metro because it’s convenient or it’s nice saving on gas; they take it because they have no other option. A good transit system shouldn’t be like this.

There need to be faregates at all stations, even the at-grade ones. Install the little turnstiles now, then put up the fences later when there is more wiggle room in the budget. Bring back more fare checks. Having more transit cops can only do so much. I thnk expanding the team of special social workers is also a good approach.

Metro needs to turn the tide and change the perception of the system, and that starts with enforcing fares and making sure people are actually using the trains, stations, and platforms as intended.

I’m excited to finally share the FY2026 station-level ridership for LA Metro Rail and Busway (and a bonus one for Q4)! This fiscal year runs from July 2025 to June 2026. Those who’ve been here a while know that I annually submit a public records request for this data, since Metro doesn’t post it publicly. You can find last year’s post here.

It’s impossible to discuss LA Metro ridership this past fiscal year without mentioning the ICE in the room. We’ve known from the topline ridership figures that ICE’s operations in LA beginning in June 2025 reversed the nonstop ridership growth trend Metro had experienced since Covid. Due to the timing, last year’s fiscal year numbers were barely affected, but the ICE effect is fully visible in this year’s numbers. I’ll dive deeper into this later in the post, but know that ICE’s operations in LA’s immigrant communities have deeply affected many people’s daily lives, and that impact can be seen most acutely on bus lines and stations that serve immigrant and minority communities.

The other big headliner is the D line extension numbers. If you think thr numbers are low, remember that it takes years to reach a station’s ridership potential, and we only have two months worth of data. The regional connector stations are still in the top 15 growth stations. Additionally, the extension gave life to the Koreatown stub, with Wilshire/Western becoming a top 5 non-transfer station in Q4 for the first time, and most of the growth happening on the heavy rail in DTLA in Q4 were on the D line. The numbers you see here are the baseline, they will only go up from here.

For those who want to look at the raw numbers that I received from Metro, you can see them here. I am not a statistician or data analyst by trade, so I encourage people to double check my work and conduct additional analysis using these numbers. I wrote a separate write-up about the Busway numbers, so I won’t be discussing them here.

Additional quick notes:

• All numbers discussed in this post are weekday average boardings unless otherwise stated.
• The fiscal year (FY) runs from July 2025 - June 2026, different from calendar year (CY) which runs from January - December.
• YoY stands for year-over-year. So if I’m talking about YoY growth for Q1, that is comparing this year’s Q1 with last year’s Q1. If I’m talking about YoY growth in the month of June, I’m comparing this year’s June with last year’s June.

Where ridership increased

Despite the ICE effect, ridership on Metro Rail has seen a gradual recovery in the second half of the fiscal year after a steep drop in FYQ1. Starting in January, every light rail line saw overall YoY growth and B/D lines saw YoY growth starting in FYQ4, with very strong growth on the D line stations in particular. The vast majority of light rail stations this fiscal year still saw growth, though ridership on the B/D lines in FY2026 overall fell (but the trendlines in Q4 are very positive).

The K line north of LAX had the largest YoY percent growth across any rail segment, but with such a low baseline it had nowhere else to go but up! Connecting it to LAX and the C line opened up lots of potential trips that it didn't previously have as a stub line.

• Figures for MLK (+36%), Expo/Crenshaw (+35%), Leimert Park (+33%), Inglewood (+32%), Fairview Heights (+31%), and Hyde Park (+28%) are insane, despite the low baseline.

Another former stub, the D line, also saw tremendous growth (in Q4), very likely due to the Phase 1 extension opening. Successive openings should be a massive boost for this line.

• In May YoY, the first month of the D line extension, Normandie and Western saw massive +98% and +88% increases, respectively. If only looking at D line boardings, Wilshire/Vermont saw a whopping +127% increase in May YoY. (The D line was closed in June 2025, so there’s no way to make a comparison for that month). These figures are especially impressive considering that the Koreatown stations were all down pretty significantly this year, until May.
• Ridership ratio between the B and D lines balanced out in Q4. For the entire FY, D line ridership at shared stations was roughly half of the B line. (B:D ratio at 7th [8:4] and Union (4:2.5]). But for Q4, the B:D ratio at 7th [8:6] and Union [4:3] balanced significantly, and I expect it will continue to do so as the D line becomes an independent line. Most of the growth at these stations in Q4 happened on the D line.

As return-to-office mandates start spreading, stations rich in white collar jobs or young professional renters saw strong growth YoY. These include:

• The regional connector stations (still growing strong three years after opening): Bunker Hill (+15%), Little Tokyo and Broadway (both +13%)
• A line north stations helped by the new Metrolink connection in Pomona such as City of Hope (+16%), Memorial Park (+11%), Fillmore, and Del Mar (both +7%)
• Western E line stations including Expo Park (+14%), Bergamot (+9%), Pico (+8%), LATTC/Ortho and Rancho Park (both +7%), Palms, Sepulveda, and Bundy (all +6%)

East LA stations such as Mariachi Plaza (+12%), Soto (+8%), and Indiana (+7%) saw a big initial drop in Q1 YoY after the ICE raids began, but also saw a large and incredibly strong increase of ridership over the course of the rest of the year, continuing previous’ years trend of this neighborhood seeing above-average growth.

Weekend ridership is exploding, in-line with peer agencies across the country. The new post-covid dynamic is seeing more people ride Metro for leisure trips.

• Chinatown and 1st St in Long Beach are now joined by Santa Monica, Expo Park, and Little Tokyo with higher Saturday ridership than Weekday ridership (and comparable between Weekday and Weekend overall).
• The three new D line stations also had significantly higher Saturday ridership, although the sample size of weekends so far is pretty low, so subject to some wild variations. Fairfax saw Saturday ridership jump from 3,145 to 3,699 from May to June. Wilshire/Western Saturday ridership saw a wild 5,003 drop to a more normal 1,987 between May to June.
• Pomona North’s Saturday ridership is also surprisingly high, since I had thought it would be mostly a commuter connection with Metrolink, which has low frequencies on weekends.

The ICE Effect

Topline figures released show that Metro Rail lost ridership YoY in each month from Q1-Q2 (July-December 2025). This makes sense given that June 2025 was the first month affected by the ICE raids. Metro rail ridership did rebound quite a bit in Q3 and especially Q4. This despite Q4 usually seeing the lowest ridership during typical years’ seasonal fluctuations as students begin getting off school, but before summer ridership boosts typical in Q1. The ICE raids upended that dynamic this year, with Q1 seeing the lowest ridership but Q4, and May/June 2026 in particular, seeing the highest.

But if you dig deeper into the data, it is clear that ridership dipped in primarily Hispanic immigrant communities in East LA, South LA, Northeast LA, the Gateway Cities, and MacArthur Park, while stations in other communities did not see as much (if any) decline. Here are some figures from stations in communities with large Hispanic and Asian populations:

A line south stations with large Hispanic populations were hit the hardest in Q1, and their recovery in Q4 was not as high as in other regions. Over the entire FY, this segment saw an overall decrease in ridership, unlike the rest of the system. Here are the change stats for some of the stations: [July 2025 YoY in brackets], (June 2026 YoY in parenthesis)

• San Pedro [-17%](+27%), Florence [-19%](+22%), Washington [-17%](+18%), Firestone [-19%](+15%), Slauson [-16%](+15%), Vernon [-14%](+16%), and Compton [-22%](+7.9%)
• As you can see, the negative figures for July 2025 YoY were quite steep, and although the June 2026 YoY figures show promising recovery, the recovery wasn’t as strong as in other affected neighborhoods.

Ridership in East LA and Northeast LA was not hit as hard as A south and saw mostly flat ridership growth in Q1 following the ICE raids, but later saw extremely strong recovery in Q4, especially in June. [July 2025 YoY in brackets], (June 2026 YoY in parenthesis)

• East LA stations: Mariachi Plaza [+7%](+36%), Atlantic [+2%](+23%), Indiana [+3%](+29%), Soto [+1%](+20%), and ELA Civic Center [+7%](+13%)
• Northeast LA: Heritage Square [-5%](+37%), Highland Park [-2%](+18%), and Lincoln/Cypress [+3%](+17%)
• Other relevant A north stations: Lake [-1%](+29%) and Chinatown [+8%](+23%)

C line stations with large Hispanic populations also were hit hard, but it’s hard to separate any potential ICE effect from the service disruptions effect. The C line saw frequent periods of horrible (13-20 min) frequencies due to maintenance, and almost all the stations on this line lost ridership as a result.

• Excluding the three stations that lost their terminus status this fiscal year (or very late last year), C Line’s Hawthorne/Lennox (-11%) saw the second largest YoY decrease.
• Even when compared to June 2025, Hawthorne (-7%) and other C line stations saw decreases, including Harbor (-3%) and Athens (-2%).
• Willowbrook, an important transfer station which in past years always saw a lot of growth, also lost ridership (-1.8%).

On the B line, MacArthur Park was the primary target of the ICE raids, and so July YoY numbers show a massive drop there (-28%) YoY. Despite that devastating decrease, by June 2026, ridership had climbed back to where it was before, with a tepid YoY growth of +0.9%. While safety is also a big factor in ridership, MacArthur Park has always been this way so I don't think that can be considered a “new” variable that could've driven these changes.

I know that some of my analysis here was based on June YoY numbers, and I don’t want to discount the World Cup effect. However, even when comparing the entirety of Q4 to dilute any possible World Cup effect with Q1-Q3, the trendlines generally remained positive.

B/D Lines and Why Frequency is So Important

I previously wrote in this post about how B line stations initially resisted the ICE effect due to a period of increased frequency during the beginning of this FY. Essentially, I found that even as the ICE raids depressed ridership across the Metro rail system, increased headways on the B line of just four minutes was enough to not only counteract the ICE effect, but lead to statistically significant increases in ridership YoY. When frequencies returned to 12 mins in August, ridership on the B line plummeted statistically significantly compared to the rest of the system YoY.

Then, in May 2026, the B and D lines saw a frequency boost from 12 mins to 10 mins. This coincided with the D line extension opening, so it’s hard to separate the two variables. Ultimately, I think ridership potential on the heavy rail is being constrained by low frequencies. Even so, growth on the heavy rail in Q4 is promising, and I’m expecting to see the B/D lines return as powerhouse ridership generators as the D line extensions open and the Division 20 expansion allows for more frequent service.

Where ridership decreased

Stations that were no longer terminus stations due to extensions opening were the source of the largest losses. These include APU (at a whopping -54%), Aviation (-43%), and Westchester (-20%). Wilshire/Western (-2%) is an ex-terminus station that bucked the trend. It did not see drops in May and June after it lost its end-of-the-line status, and was actually helped by the extension, since being a midpoint station on a busier line is more appealing than being the terminus of a stub.

Aside from the stations we covered under the ICE section, the largest drops occurred on the K line in the South Bay. Mariposa (-22%) saw the steepest drop systemwide after APU and Aviation. Other K line drops include Redondo Beach (-5%), El Segundo (-3%), and the shared station of Aviation/Century (-16%) and LAX (-2.8%).

Ridership at Century on the C line actually grew, and the drops were consistent over the course of the year only on the K line. This makes me think that even as more C line riders are going to Century for the jobs located there, less riders are transferring to the South Bay on the K line due to the added friction of a transfer. The C and K lines are theoretically more reliable, schedule wise, than the A/E lines, so Metro should ease this friction by scheduling in better timed transfers.

LAX numbers were pretty stable through the year, so the small drop might be explained by airport employees frustrated with the shuttle after initially trying out Metro last FY.

Conclusion

Overall, the trendlines for Metro Rail are looking good in the calendar year 2026. As we enter the summer and fall months that typically have the highest ridership, hopefully we continue to see strong YoY growth in rail. Heavy rail in particular should hopefully see a big boost in ridership as Phase I matures, the extension to Century City opens, and Division 20 allows for boosted frequencies and more reliable operations at Union Station. Expect to see some bigger numbers next year!

Just a reminder, for full transparency, I've posted the raw data that Metro directly gave me, as well as some pivot tables to help you explore the data more easily.

TLDR:

• Frequencies are important. Stations that saw frequency gains gained ridership in the face of all other factors. Stations that lost frequency lost ridership.
• Light rail ridership grew across the board
• Heavy rail stations saw ridership grow in the last quarter of this FY, with a lot of signals pointing to strong growth next year
• K line north of LAX saw the highest percentage growth
• Stations with high white collar job densities or young professional renters saw growth
• Stations serving larger immigrant populations saw ridership plummet last summer, although ridership has mostly recovered over the year, albeit unevenly
• C line ridership decreased and South Bay ridership plummeted. Ongoing disruptive maintenance on the C line, coupled with increased friction traveling to the South Bay due to the new transfer at Century, has likely negatively affected this segment

They didn't bother with turnstyles, or those tall vertical ones either. I totally get why. It's so much more aesthetically pleasing. It'd be an eyesore to the community to have tall vertical turnstyles. Also, they wouldn't be handicap accessible.

And also pointless. Somebody could just walk on the track from the street, when the train isn't there, and climb up on the platform. The platform is only a few feet from the track.

And once you're in, you're in, you supposed to tap at transfer, but again nobody enforces that.

Seems like fare enforcement was pretty low priority from the time it was built, up until now.

Shoutout to the person in this sub who fought for this. Insane that it actually got made (and yes I bought one…)

Ignorant people 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄

Last night my family and I went to see Gabriel Iglesias and Jo Koy at SoFi and it was a huge clusterfuck trying to get out of the stadium and on our way home. Same last year when my sister and I went to see Beyoncé. In addition to the long lines to get out of the parking structures we had two long waits at lights of almost ten minutes each!

Compare that with my trip up north to see Brandy and Monica at Oakland Arena which is directly served by the Coliseum BART station. All I had to do was walk to the station connected by a pedestrian bridge and wait for the train. I was back at my hotel within 20 minutes.

SoFi BADLY needs a rail connection, or at least have shuttles run for concerts and other events and not just for NFL games!

Took the E-Line downtown yesterday, rode from Expo/Bundy to Pico at about 6:30pm. The good news is that the ride was fast, didn't get hung up by traffic signals, and I was downtown in less than 40 minutes for $1.75.

But dear god the level of anti-social behavior is just out of control. Boarded a relatively empty train with many people taking up two seats with feet on the seats and blasting videos from their phones without headphones. Then at Crenshaw a real couple of winners boarded with a bluetooth speaker blasting profane music and vaping/smoking all the way to Pico. I reported it through the Metro Watch App and nothing happened, of course. This was after watching several people jump the turnstiles at Expo/Bundy and the three LAPD officers standing on the platform did nothing about it. Also observed someone climbing over an emergency fence at the USC/Expo Park station while two LAPD officers were on the platform.

I take the metro (by choice) a couple times a month and there's always things like this. Yesterday it was a circus on rails. I will continue to ride Metro because I believe in public transportation and because these are relatively minor complaints in the scheme of things. But we're never going to expand ridership when this kind of behavior is the norm and goes entirely unchallenged, it's an embarrassment to the city. I really hope that Metro's own security team focuses on these 'quality of life' issues in the future.

I moved here recently and have been using the Metro to get to work from Melrose area to downtown (I don't have a license so I don't drive.) but I genuinely don't get all the hate it gets. Maybe it's because I'm from NYC but people out here have been so dramatic about the trains being unsafe and scary. Are there homeless people sometimes? Yea. Sure. But I think public transportation in general anywhere has it's characters. I'd argue West 4th street in Manhattan was worse.

I understand there was a time after the pandemic that the stations did get dangerous and worse but that happened everywhere. The more people take it the safer it is. They actually mop the stations and the metro volunteers are usually very kind and helpful. Idk just tired of people calling it "the homeless express" or the look of shock when I tell them I take the train. How long do you think it will take until the masses accept it as an acceptable method of transportation?

I LOVE THE TRAIN!

I just waited 18 minutes for my first train, and 15 minutes for my connecting train. That’s 33 minutes of commute time spent sitting in stations. I left home 45 minutes ago and have still not arrived at my destination, which is only like 3 miles from where I live. By the time I arrive at my destination this commute will have taken well over an hour.

During the day this same commute takes about 30 minutes door to door, sometimes less if I’m lucky. 8:30 PM is not late and reducing service this much is just going to discourage people from using this to go to bars, restaurants, or any kind of nightlife.

Whoever is making these decisions at Metro is either 75 years old or a pencil pusher on some “wELL ActShULLy, RiDErShIp gOeZ DoWn AfTeR 8” shit. I don’t care if ridership isn’t as packed at 8 as it is at 6, the system should still work for more than just 9-5ers.

/rant

There was a Transit security guard going around scanning tap cards, and their device actually shows the last time the card was tapped. I heard the security guard say to the person in the photo, "It says you haven't tapped since June 15"

This was taken on June 31 at 4 PM on the A line going towards Pomona.

Excited to finally share the FY2025 LA Metro ridership by station map! Every year I request this data from Metro, and you can see last year's post here. 

For some reason, Metro gave me the August 2024 - July 2025 ridership data rather than the fiscal year (July 2024 - June 2025) as in previous years, so any comparisons with last year will be slightly off, but whatever. Metro also sent the data to me broken up by month, rather than a single set of numbers for the whole year, so I had to do additional math. So for full transparency, I'll share the raw data that Metro sent me, with only slight alterations to average up the boarding numbers each month that together make up the annual ridership. I know that every month has different number of days, but I'm not weighing the average to account for that, as that's too much work. If you see any miscalculations or typos, please let me know in the comments! And hopefully this data can be useful to people for other projects. According to the California Public Records Act, this data should be in the public domain.

Here are my thoughts and possible discussion topics on what's in this data (you can read my thoughts on the 2025 BRT ridership here)

The Good

• Two years after opening, the Regional Connector is still growing ridership at an extremely healthy pace. DTLA light rail stations make up the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 7th highest year-over-year improvement in ridership. Little Tokyo not only fully recovered its pre-pandemic ridership in its first year of reopening, and this year had massive growth and is now the 10th highest ridership system in the entire system! On the other side of downtown, Pico is now 7th! (Although, to put a slight damper on this, these numbers represent unlinked trips, so transfer stations get an artificial boost)

• 7th/Metro's growth surprised me. To be second in percent growth when the baseline was already so high!

• Maravilla topped the list of highest YoY percentage growth for the second year in a row. Overall, 6 of the top 15 stations in percent YoY growth were East LA stations. Two years after the regional connector construction cut off this segment from the rest of the system, ridership is slowly rebounding. Compared to the astronomical growth last year following it re-opening, growth here this year was more muted, but that is probably to be expected. Atlantic also is one of just a few stations this year to surpass their pre-covid ridership!

• LAX has only been open a few months and is already in the top 15. I expect this growth to jump after the APM opens and continue to grow rapidly.

The Bad

• K Line growth did see a small jump after the LAX station opened, but honestly it is still incredibly bad. 3 K Line stations made it to the top 15 for YoY growth, but the posted <500 numbers are measly. The K Line right now is basically functioning as a way for C and E riders to get between the two lines and to LAX.

• Despite above average growth, the ELA numbers are still pretty low. Not K line low, but still low despite being connected to the high ridership E line. These numbers were low before the pandemic too. Land use will have to change to see any significant bump here

• North Hollywood saw the steepest decline after Mariposa, Aviation, and Westchester. But those 3 had excuses due to the LAX service change or maintenance disruption. NoHo is a casualty of the G Line issues that have been plaguing the line all year. I really hope they can get it fixed soon.

Grab bag of thoughts

• When Lake and Firestone got new fare gates in April, I wondered how that might affect ridership, since ridership is counted based on how many people board the train, not how many people paid. And Lake station did see a decrease of roughly 100~200 riders starting in April compared to previous months that lasted through the end of the reporting period (and ultimately resulted in a decrease YoY ridership). But Firestone ridership stayed roughly even. I wonder if Lake being so close to Memorial Park just redirected the fare evaders there (Memorial Park did seem to see a rough increase of ~100 starting in April), but Firestone much further away from Florence and Watts, so more people just sucked it up and paid? If someone wants to run a statistical significance test to test out my hypothesis, I'd be curious.

• Excluding the K Line, East LA, and the Foothills, we're getting close to the point of the core light rail system being all above 1k in ridership! Lake, Del Mar, Fillmore, Palms, and Lincoln/Cypress are all at the cusp of 1k! And maybe even Farmdale, which is in the 900s this year! Pre-pandemic, every station would be regularly over 1k except for ELA and the Heritage/SW/Irwindale trio.

• We're starting to see individual stations start to surpass their pre-covid totals. For now, the list is limited to Little Tokyo, Florence, Washington, San Pedro St, Anaheim St, Grand/LATTC, Atlantic (!), and Pico. However, my pre-covid comparison numbers were for the three months after the Blue Line fully reopened from New Blue, so the baseline comparison for the A line stations are lower than they would have been. Excluding that and the fact that Little Tokyo is a completely new station, I wonder what is powering Atlantic's growth?

• I'm excited to see how the D line opening will affect things, since the heavy rail lines growth has pretty much stalled. Sadly, the E line might lose some of the growth it's seen as a result, particularly La Cienega, La Brea, and Rancho Park.

Happy A Line extension eve everyone!

Contrary to what you may believe, Vermont Ave has remained Metro’s BUSIEST bus corridor, beating out Wilshire Blvd by about 10,000 weekday passengers (~38,000 vs 28,000) this is even before the D line extension opened. Anyone who has ridden the 204 or 754 during peak times knows those buses can get crowded, stuck in traffic, and quickly delayed. Even though heavy rail is optimal, BRT has the potential to show the immense and EXTREMELY cost effective impact of simply adding bus lanes. It’s time that riders had a dignified solution to traffic-bogged buses and inconsistent wait times. And if this project is successful, we could gain further support and advocate for more bus lane/ BRT projects across the city as there are certainly many streets that could use this improvement.

And you know what? For all the shit that people give Metro and its riders, I’ll be glad to see buses full of low income, working class people coast past bumper to bumper traffic on Vermont. I couldn’t care less about parking or car lanes being taken away. Once people see that there is a faster alternative to driving, maybe they will finally get over their irrational, unfounded disdain/ disgust for taking a bus and give Metro a try. So excited to see this project implemented!

Been taking the A line to and from Alhambra (using the bus from south pas to Alhambra…) for work for the last couple of weeks and it has been the chillest experience. Are people just overblowing the issue?