Metro invites the public to listening sessions to share their comments on a new transit system planned for the Vermont Transit Corridor. Metro plans to enhance transit service along a 12.4-mile-long section of Vermont Avenue from Hollywood Boulevard to 120th Street.
The listening sessions will feature free food, giveaways and interactive activities designed to garner feedback about the community’s vision for the Vermont Transit Corridor. The public is invited to stop by in-person between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. at one of the following events in April or May:
Saturday, April 23, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Irmas Youth Center, 119911 Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90044
Saturday, April 30, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
LA City College, 855 N. Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90029
Saturday, May 7, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Ward AME Church, 1177 W. 25th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
Metro is also hosting a virtual listening session:
Wednesday, May 4, 5:30 p.m., register at https://rebrand.ly/metrovtc
Metro’s busiest bus lines provide service within this corridor which includes the communities of South Los Angeles, Athens, Pico Union, Korea Town, and Hollywood. To create an equitable mobility solution to enhance connections for all riders, Metro is studying short, medium and long-term options that include more frequent and reliable bus service, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), light rail and heavy rail options in the Vermont Transit Corridor Project that will connect to the Metro B (Red), C (Green), D (Purple), and E (Expo) Lines.
Metro identified the Vermont Transit Corridor as an equity-focused community where nine out of 10 people identify as black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), 84 percent of residents do not have access to a car and 66 percent of residents ride Metro five days per week.
Metro encourages everyone who lives, works, plays, shops, attends school and worships anywhere along the Vermont Transit Corridor to weigh-in and share their vision of the future of transit that will have an impact on this corridor for generations to come.
Funding allocated from Measure M, a half-cent sales tax approved by voters in 2016, provides $425 million for a project in the Vermont Transit Corridor.
For more information about the project, visit https://www.metro.net/projects/vermont-corridor/
Note to readers and editors: Metro Operators are crucial to keeping LA moving. Metro is currently hiring more than 500 bus operators and is offering a $3,000 bonus for coming aboard. This is a great career opportunity. Metro offers competitive hourly rates starting at $19.12 with benefits that include health insurance, tuition reimbursements, paid training, retirement plan options and flexible working hours. Please encourage friends, family and community members to become a part of the Metro team that provides excellence in service and support and keeps our region moving. Apply at metro.net/driveLA.
Categories: Projects
Metro knows this line should be rail, not BRT. It has the highest ridership potential of any other project, and serves some of the lowest income most transit dependent people on the west coast. But thanks to Metro Board Members like Janice Hahn, this corridor will never see anything but buses until the 2070s or later. So that Hahn can instead build a subway to the Citadel outlet mall and Washington Blvd corridor to Whittier as a top priority “pillar project”. A corridor with the lowest ridership potential versus Vermont, the busiest bus corridor in southern California. So thanks to transit planning by folks like Hahn, instead of experts, we will have empty trains along Washington Blvd and crowded buses (with no trains) on Vermont for the next 50 years or more. All to serve an outlet mall, strip malls and gas stations, along Washington Blvd, a very wide road with little traffic relative to other much busier corridors in the county.
A Vermont rail line would be the most successful modern transit line built in the nation, attracting 15,000 riders per mile in a dense, congested, low income corridor. The ENTIRE line would run through Equity Focus Communities and it would have the highest use of any of the new rail lines Metro is proposing under Measure M.
So why is Vermont rail the absolute LAST priority in Measure M, with a scheduled groundbreaking date “sometime after 2067” based on the official language of the ordinance? Because Metro has chosen the political route of prioritizing suburban subways to the Citadel Outlet Mall (Eastside Phase 2) and an extension of the Green Line to an oil refinery and parking lot in Torrance. Chasing wealthier single family homeowners to sometimes ride a train versus serving your core riders. Projects that will, at best, attract less than 20,000 riders total (for billions of dollars spent), while lower income bus riders on Vermont are stuck on some of the slowest, most crowded buses in California, until at least the year 2067 or later.
If Metro really knew how transit works, where it works best, and why it doesn’t work in sprawling low density environments, they wouldn’t be wasting over $6 billion for Eastside 2 and a subway to the Citadel Outlet Mall, and would instead focus on corridors like Vermont, which are 100% Equity Focus Communities, in the densest parts of the county, where people are most dependent and reliant on public transit.
Thanks for wasting our tax dollars on vanity rail projects to a mall no one relies on every day, Metro. And for ignoring any significant investment on your BUSIEST, MOST CROWDED bus line. Instead you want rail along one of the LOWEST ridership bus corridors, Washington Boulevard, for a few people in Whittier who will never be as dependent on transit as areas like Vermont, and who will never grow in a way that supports transit. Whittier will continue to be 99% auto oriented, and poor bus riders on Vermont will wonder why they can’t get any significant transit improvements for the next 50 years.
no bus rapid transit and no l.r.t. they are too slow yes on hrt they are safe fast extension of red line to san pedro. p1. 20. billion and p2 20.billion 40.billion totail.
The long term plan should be heavy rail from Wilshire to 120th (transitioning from subway to arial at Gage). Both Red and Purple lines could be separated if that impacts headways too much. Purple would run from West LA (hopefully Santa Monica eventually) past Union Station to Arts District. Red would run from North Hollywood (or Burbank Airport) to 120th.
New line could be built in stages – from Wilshire to Expo, Expo to Slauson, Slauson to 120th.
Take the cash you were going to use on the BRT, and just apply it to a subway instead. any money spent on transit that isn’t rail along this corridor is money squandered.
$400 million vs the $2-$3 billion needed just to get this to Expo alone. Unless you can come up with the $2.6 billion necessary to get this thing ready to run to Expo by the 2028 Olympics (clock is ticking), don’t you think this is a bit short-sighted. To tell Vermont residents “screw your brt, you’ll have to wait until all the money for a subway is there” is just as much of a slap in the face as the short-term BRT proposal itself, IMO.
Measure M promised 2 separate projects for Vermont, so regardless a subway is coming. But I will agree on one thing: Building a rail line to the Citadel needs to be taken off the table now.