Ride our bus priority lanes on Sepulveda Boulevard!

Do you live, work, or play in the San Fernando Valley? Have you ridden Line 234 down Sepulveda Boulevard lately? If you haven’t yet, what are you waiting for? Try out our new(ish) bus priority lanes!  

These bus priority lanes extend 5.6 miles between Ventura Boulevard in Encino and Rayen Street in North Hills. There’s also a .9-mile lane on Ventura Boulevard going westbound from Vesper Avenue to Sepulveda Boulevard. Since they opened, these new lanes have been speeding up Line 234 by up to 15% or more. Better yet, our operators are driving them 24 hours a day! 

While these special bus lanes have been in operation since this past October, we held a small ceremony to celebrate the project this morning in Van Nuys. Bus priority lanes reflect the importance of teamwork in the work we do. Our roads pass through so many neighborhoods, council districts, and even entire cities. That means that it’s up to us to come together in order to make sure they’re safe, efficient, clean, and connect us to everywhere we want to go.  

The ceremony was attended by L.A. County Supervisor Board Chair and Metro Board Member Lindsey Horvath, Metro Board Member Jacquelyn Dupont-Walker, L.A. Council President and Metro Board Member Paul Krekorian, Councilmember Imelda Padilla (CD-6), Mehmet Berker, Director of Transportation and Infrastructure for Councilmember Nithya Raman (CD-4) as well as representatives from the mayor’s office, LADOT, and Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins. All of these people played critical roles in bringing these bus lanes to life.  

Bus priority lanes are relatively quick and cost-effective ways to improve transit. We can build them without widening roads, kicking up dust, or building new infrastructure. They represent innovation at its best.  

And we’re not done yet! Today, we have 51 lane miles of bus priority lanes in service throughout the region, with another 34 lane miles under construction on Florence Avenue in South LA and Roscoe Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley.  In the future, we will open up 13 more on Vermont Avenue, which will extend from Hollywood Boulevard in the north all the way south to 120th Street. (And if you want to weigh in –– we’re hosting a community meeting about the project this Thursday.) By 2028, we will have 100 miles of bus priority lanes operating in Los Angeles.  

We hope that you’ll join us on a ride.