Mayor Villaraigosa and a replica of Lady Gaga at the event this morning announcing more evening rail service. Photo by Juan Ocampo/Metro.
Los Angeles Mayor and Metro Board Chair Antonio Villaraigosa just finished announcing the news at a news event at the Music Center: Beginning this Sunday, Nov. 13, Metro will run trains every 10 minutes between 6 p.m. and midnight on the Red and Purple line subway, as well as the Blue Line between downtown L.A. and Long Beach.
It’s a demonstration project that aims to boost ridership and better serve entertainment, cultural and sporting venues in addition to restaurants, hotels and stores. The service will also be accompanied by more discounts available to those who use Metro to get where they’re going.
“L.A. doesn’t roll up its sidewalks at sundown,” said Mayor Villaraigosa, who also noted that this is part of a bigger program to expand transit throughout the region — whether it’s building new lines or taking better advantage of existing transit.
“Our downtown is booming — it’s no longer a nine-to-five downtown,” said Carol Schatz, President and CEO of the Central City Assn., which represents downtown businesses. “Metro’s slogan is ‘more trains, more often.’ Our slogan is ‘party hardy and take the train.’”
Mayor Villaraigosa announces the news along with representatives of the downtown, Hollywood and Long Beach sports and cultural scene. Photo by Juan Ocampo/Metro.
The project is starting with Metro’s busiest rail lines at night. The subway currently carries an estimated 18,568 boardings between 7 p.m. and midnight with the Blue Line carrying 9,379 between those times. The agency will see how the new service performs and may make similar changes to other lines next spring.
Among the representatives of the night-life scene on hand for the announcement Monday were cheerleaders for the L.A. Kings and L.A. Clippers — both teams play a short walk from the Blue Line — as well as officials from the L.A. Opera, Hollywood and the Long Beach Aquarium.
I know some Source readers will ask: why not post-midnight service? The answer from Metro officials: they wanted to first determine if there are ridership gains to be had from more frequent service during the regular night hours. If the program goes well, late night service may still be added.
In the meantime, patrons on the Gold, Green and Orange Line busway should see quicker trips if they’re transferring to the subway or Blue Line at night. The extra service should also benefit workers who won’t have to wait as long for trains and will likely see more people on those trains, leading to a safer atmosphere.
Here’s a good news story by Eric Richardson of blogdowntown that fills in some other details.
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I think this is great news. 20 minutes between trains in the evening is too long, the trains are more crowded. There are trains that are sitting idle during those times and more frequent trains on the red/blue/gold/purple lines will increase the popularity with more frequent services that also have more seats available on a given train.
Good call.
Thank you Metro.
Great news, but in agreement with the other posts, later service would be more useful than more frequent service. Daily 24 hour service is probably overkill at this point, but service until 3am Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights would be a huge help.
I am excited for this, simply because just missing a train can add 20 minutes to my trip, and thats if I am only taking one train, unless I am in the red/purple line zone( Ive got more options between Wilshire/Vermont & Union Staition.
I agree with everyone above about late night service. Trains would fill the 3 hour gap of service we have now. I’d wait 25 minutes for a late nite train. 24 hour service should be standard on all trains. People have a life at night as well. Working, hanging out, going from point a to point b, etc..
Great news and good move, Metro. But this type of improvement should also start occurring with many bus lines as well since, again, the first or last leg of a bus-rail trip can be prohibitive with such long bus headways. And of course, it would be nice to see Metrolink do this as to help correct its poor headways.
This is a welcome change. But like everyone else has said, we really need the trains to run until 3:00am on the weekends.
I think it’s unanimous that everyone feels the trains should run until 3 AM, Thurs-Sun, at a minimum. I have many friends that refuse to ride them because the close so early. If Metro truly wants to expand ridership and cut down on drunk driving from NoHo to Hollywood to DTLA, then they would extend there hours.
More frequent trains until midnight would be acceptable, then have them come every 15-20 minutes from 12-3.
Please Metro, give the city of LA the transportion tools they deserve!!
Awesome!
This a great idea, but I think all rail lines should be operational 24 hours, like New York MTA, and Chicago’s Metra(i think thats the name).
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