Expo Line service to USC football kicks off with big crowds!

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The new Expo Line did what it was designed to do this afternoon, carrying many USC fans to the Trojans’ football season opener against Hawaii. It is the first time in nearly six decades that there has been train service to a football game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Extra service was added on the Expo Line and throughout the Metro system and up to now everything has been running smoothly. “It’s a great start for a new L.A.-Trojan-Metro tradition,” said Metro CEO Art Leahy.

Here are some photos taken this afternoon by Metro’s Marc Littman:

The last photo shows the command center that Metro is using near USC to monitor train service.

Categories: Transportation News

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8 replies ›

  1. Im very proud of the operators that made saturday a wonderful day!for me and my family.As a retired rail operator old T88 and an origanal gold line operator great job.i will keep and eye on you from time to time from a far, keep up the great and awsome work that you do oh! and take care of the mail line,the future in rail is very bright.

  2. The only downside was that on my way to John Williams Night at Hollywood Bowl that evening, I had to park in the overflow lot at Wardlow, and on my way home that night, I had to wait out two or three trains being pulled into the yard after Del Amo before I could catch one that would take me back to my car.

    But to be fair, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that much traffic going through 7th/Metro so quickly, and it all went through remarkably smoothly. It was almost like the “trunk” portion of the Boston “T” Green Line, or the Market Street Subway portion of the SF MUNI Metro. The LACMTA is to be congratulated on the evening’s throughput.

  3. I took the Expo line to the game (been waiting a year to do this!!!) and it was absolutely painless. A friend and fellow Trojan alum from San Francisco remarked to me how much easier it was than taking transit to any sporting event in San Francisco. We were on an old train but he was still surprised at how clean and quiet it was.

    I thought they did a great job with crowd control at the crossing… tons of volunteers with yellow chains to let pedestrians cross or keep them out of the intersection, depending on the time. I’m surprised Marc was stick for 10 minutes, as I saw a bunch of trains cross with no more than 15-20 seconds of waiting.

    The only problem I had was that it seemed they unnecessarily directed all Expo Line riders to walk all the way around the far side of the Rose Garden after the game, when you could enter the line relatively easily from either side.

  5. I took it – was great. Only problem is, due to the huge crowds crossing Exposition from campus the trains were stacking as they had to wait for cops to stop fans from crossing the tracks. I had to sit in the Jefferson/Expo tunnel for 10min as the train ahead couldn’t move. Also the city had to close off Exposition and have a lot of cops to to corral people around the trains.

    Why when this station was built wasn’t pedestrian tunnel dug under Exposition linking Campus to Expo Park? Then when you got off the train you’d go down in to the tunnel instead of having to cross Expo. This would also – on gameday – allow the crowds to simply cross under Exposition to Expo park and the trains can run fluidly, Exposition can stay open, and you wouldn’t need to have so many cops doing traffic duty! Uggghh!!

  6. I’d be interested in seeing Expo boarding estimates and load factors throughout the day, as well as marginal boarding estimates on the rest of the rail system.

    OAS, any estimate for when the Website will be 100?