Who’s ready to ride the D? The D Line, that is.
For the first time in over a quarter-century, Los Angeles has expanded its underground subway system.
On Friday, May 8, LA Metro’s highly anticipated D Line extension opens at 12:30 p.m. with much fanfare, welcoming riders to three new stations between Koreatown and the line’s new western terminus at the edge of Beverly Hills.
The christening of the D Line extension into West Los Angeles features a systemwide party with food and drink, music and entertainment, and local vendors and information booths promoting the new stations and the neighborhoods they serve.
The three new stations are all located along Wilshire Boulevard at La Brea in Miracle Mile, Fairfax in Beverly Grove, and La Cienega in Beverly Hills. All of these new stations are ADA accessible and feature “public “museum-quality” artwork and landscaped plazas at street level. Safety features include 24/7 security coverage, security teams who will be riding the trains, new bike lockers, and Metro’s taller fare gates which are meant to stop fare evaders.
LA Metro is offering free rides throughout the weekend to celebrate to D Line extension, and is also selling special commemorative TAP cards at the new stations, while supplies last.
What the LA Metro D Line extension means for Los Angeles
Mid-Wilshire and the Miracle Mile have long been underserved by LA Metro, despite being densely populated areas of the city with significant economic and cultural landmarks. Beverly Hills continues to be one of L.A.’s main commerce hubs.
The Wilshire/La Brea station offers close access to the El Rey Theatre, Korean Cultural Center and SAG-AFTRA’s national headquarters.
The Fairfax station puts you in walking distance of Museum Row, featuring La Brea Tar Pits, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Petersen Automotive Museum, and Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. It’s also near the Grove and Original Farmer’s Market.
LA Metro officials say the completion of the extension will not only create better connectivity to these important cultural centers, but will also reduce traffic on the busy Wilshire Boulevard street corridor.
Read More: LA Metro restocks viral ‘Ride the D’ t-shirt alongside new themed apparel
Wilshire/La Cienega provides access to the Beverly Center and Cedars-Sinai, in addition to local theaters.
The extension of the D Line could create a sizeable leap in ridership as more Angelenos have access to the LA Metro rail system.
What’s next?
Expansion on the D Line isn’t over quite yet. Construction remains active on two additional segments of the line from the current western endpoint at La Cienega deeper into Beverly Hills at Beverly Drive and Century City, followed by two new stops in Westwood at UCLA and the VA Hospital. Both of those segments were most recently targeting a 2027 completion date, but the third segment in Westwood could potentially be pushed to 2028.
The current D Line extension was also delayed from late 2025 to now, so it’s not out of the question that further delays could come.
While this portion of the D Line extension has opened in time for the FIFA World Cup next month, it remains to be seen if the other two segments will open in time for the other major events the city is hosting in the coming months and years, including Super Bowl LXI in 2027 at SoFi Stadium and the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympics.
LA Metro is making strides in its expansion goals
The E line extension further west is another significant expansion for LA Metro, which has celebrated a handful of major milestones in the past five years. Among them, the A Line extension into Pomona, which had a similar slate of celebrations, opened last September, which I covered for KTLA.com.
Background: The A Line will continue to grow in the coming years as it expands further north/east into Claremont and, maybe or maybe not, into san Bernardino County.
Months before that, LA Metro celebrated the opening of the LAX/Metro Transit Center Station, which closed a critical gap in service by providing the closest access to Los Angeles International Airport in the city’s history. Currently, the station connection to LAX is serviced by shuttles, but rumors of a potential opening of the LAX People Mover — a project itself that has been delayed too often to keep track — has created optimism about a true train-to-terminal connection as promised years ago.
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The LAX/Metro Transit Center, which is the largest station in LA Metro’s network, also served as a major connecting hub for the K and C light rail lines.
In 2023, LA Metro completed the regional connector project, which simplified the overall Metro system and saw the opening of three new underground stations. It also led to the creation of the longest light-rail system on the planet, the A Line, which can deliver riders from Long Beach to the aforementioned Pomona station without a single transfer.
For all the criticism Los Angeles receives for its bumper-to-bumper traffic at rush hour, and jokes about the city’s subway system and its ridership, or lack thereof, no other major metropolis in North America has made as concerted an effort to build out and expand its public transit system.
Los Angeles Metro Rail, which includes the underground subways and the four light rail lines, began service only 35 years ago and has grown to over 120 miles.
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In the coming decades, the system will include the Southeast Gateway Line* into the, well, southeast L.A. Gateway Cities, an extension of the K Line to the Hollywood Bowl, and a third underground subway system connection the San Fernando Valley to the L.A. Basin via the Sepulveda pass, and eventually connecting to LA.
Background: the Southeast Gateway Line was previously named the West Santa Ana Branch Transit Corridor but that name was changed in a public contest to avoid confusion with the Orange County city that shared the name.
The Source, LA Metro’s blog, has released a detailed history of the D Line and other proposed West L.A. transit systems throughout the city’s existence.
“We believe that once the D Line is fully open and helping Angelenos reach destinations for generations to come, it will be hard to imagine how our region lived without the project,” LA Metro wrote in the blog post.
LA Metro’s viral Ride the D merch is also still in stock, just in time for the grand opening.
