D Line Subway Extension Section 1 update: Ninety-eight percent finished and counting  

Good news: the D Line is reopening with the start of service this Saturday, July 26. The D Line has been closed since May 17 as we worked at Wilshire/Western Station to tie the current D Line to the future D Line Extension – more about that important work is below. D Line trains will run every 12 minutes 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. and every 20 minutes at other times this weekend. 

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I recently attended a lunch held for workers on Section 1 of the D Line Subway Extension Project, the first and longest portion of our historic plan to extend the D Line to Westwood. Built by a joint venture among Skanska, Traylor Brothers, and Shea Construction (STS), Section 1 will extend the D Line from its existing terminus at Wilshire/Western station nearly four miles west, adding three new stations at Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax, and Wilshire/La Cienega. 

Sections 2 and 3, which will bring the D Line to Century City and then Westwood, are currently forecast to open in 2026 and 2027, respectively. 

The event was held in the South La Brea Yard on Wilshire Boulevard and La Brea Avenue, right outside the future Wilshire/La Brea station. This yard, you might say, is this project’s home base.  

This was where the first Tunnel Boring Machines (TBMs) for the project –– two 1,000-ton custom-made mega-drills named Elsie and Soyeon –– were lowered into the ground for the first time in 2018. The machines tunneled east to the station at Wilshire/Western before they were removed, transported back to the yard, reinserted into the ground and sent chugging west toward the future station at Wilshire/La Cienega, breaking through to the station box in 2021.  

The TBMs are long gone, and the yard is now full of trucks and excavators. In the future, Metro’s Joint Development team plans to turn the site into affordable housing (RFPs will go out to pre-qualified developers later this summer).    

“Notice anything unusual about the yard?” Ned Racine, one of Metro’s construction relations officers for Section 1, asked me.  

I put down my water bottle and scanned my surroundings. Over a hundred workers clothed in yellow safety vests were seated at picnic tables, catching up with their colleagues over burgers and fries. Some of them were marveling at the display of black-and-white photographs arranged under the tent, which captured some of the project’s most memorable moments during construction.  

I wasn’t sure how to answer. I haven’t visited many construction yards.  

Racine pointed to what looked like giant quilted walls on one side of the yard, and then to the mostly bare street entrance.  

“The soundwalls are coming down.”  

I nodded. We both knew what that meant. The project was in the home stretch. 

 The D Line Subway Extension has been a long time coming. It’s been almost 17 years since LA County voters approved Measure R, a half-cent sales tax that provided the project its first serious chunk of funding. It’s been over 20 years since former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa famously pledged to build a “subway to the sea” in his mayoral campaign, which evolved into the heavy rail line being built today. And it’s been much, much longer since the idea of building rail along Wilshire was first floated to Angelenos, sparking plenty of controversy that you can read about here.  

Now, more than 10 years after groundbreaking, we are nearing the finish line. The project is 98 percent complete according to the STS project managers.  

Yet there’s still a lot of work to do before the stations are anticipated to open to the public in Fall, 2025. We’re currently in our critical testing phase, which can last about five or six months. I wanted some insights on what our teams are working on 80 feet below the ground, so I asked Racine. Here’s what I learned:  

– Connecting computer systems: Over the past two months, we’ve been connecting the computer systems that regulate various aspects of the underground subway environment, such as air quality and ventilation. We’re also ensuring that the systems that control the existing segment of the D Line, built during the 1990s, can “talk” to the new systems. (This was one of the key reasons for the temporary D Line closure.)  

– Testing train control system: Another system, called Automatic Train Control (ATC), lets you know a train’s precise position on a track and relative to other trains: what direction it’s running, when it left the last station, and when it will arrive at the next station. This system connects to the digital signs you’ll see when waiting for a train on the platform.  

– Testing crossovers: Crossovers are what they sound like –– portions of track where two parallel tunnels intersect. The crossovers are about 300 feet long and they are often placed at the ends of stations. (Two of the new stations in Section 1 –– Wilshire/La Brea and Wilshire/La Cienega –– have them.) If a train stalls, for example, or if there is an emergency, a train can seamlessly pass into another tunnel segment. Right now, we’re making sure that the signals work properly so trains can seamlessly cross over to the opposite tracks without a hitch.   

– Running trains: It’s finally happening! Trains are running beneath Wilshire Boulevard. At first, we drove trucks through the tunnels with metal frames that represented the width of the rail cars. (The tunnels are 23 feet in diameter.) Now, we have real rail cars –– both the existing A650 trains and the new HR4000s –– which we started to run with large, water-filled containers on board to approximate the weight of real passengers. We’re running these trains at low speeds to see what the signal response looks like, while also checking for unusual sounds or rattling.  

Very soon, we’ll begin testing system integration to Metro Rail Operations Center (ROC). After that (and we don’t have a date yet) the CPUC (California Public Utilities Commission) mandates at least 60 days of pre‑revenue service before the rail line can open. Stay tuned for updates.  

The D Line’s Section 1 is unlike all other Metro projects. Traveling beneath one of the region’s busiest streets, it connects the cities of Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, a handful of neighborhoods, and dozens of destinations (think the Miracle Mile, Century City, and UCLA, to name a few).  It’s the longest tunneling project through tar-infested sands in our nation’s history. It has gone through so many changes and evolutions (and accompanying name changes) –– from the Red Line Extension to the ‘Subway to the Sea’ to the Purple Line to the D Line. Bringing it to life has been a marathon effort, which became clearer than ever to me after speaking with John Yen of Skanska.  

 “Years ago,” he told me, “you would have mostly miners at these team lunches. Then, as their work finished, they would move on to other projects and the lunches would be attended by engineers, then the carpenters, then the electricians, and so on.”   

It made me think of relay teams that compete in triathlons. Finishing one leg of the race isn’t really the end so much as passing a baton to your teammate.  

“That’s the paradox of what we do in construction,” Yen laughed. “We work ourselves out of a job.”