Late night commuters and weekend riders across Los Angeles will need to leave extra time for their trips as LA Metro begins a monthslong maintenance program that will reduce much of its subway system to single tracks.
According to LA Metro, essential system upgrades and construction projects will slow train traffic across its B and D lines every weeknight and throughout entire weekends until early next year.
While an exact timeline was not posted, the updated schedule is apparently already in place and will remain through January 2027.
Specific details about the types of construction and maintenance projects were not immediately disclosed, but materials posted in LA Metro stations indicated that trains will arrive approximately every 20 minutes on each line instead of standard intervals.
Under the updated operating schedule, maintenance crews will conduct track repairs every weeknight from 9 p.m. until midnight. Weekend slowdowns will cover LA Metro’s full operating day, stretching from 4 a.m. through midnight on Saturdays and Sundays.
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The maintenance work affects all stations located along the B Line and D Line subway corridors.
LA Metro subways are undergoing maintenance
This is the latest round of planned maintenance that will affect riders on the LA Metro subways.
Earlier this week, LA Metro announced that two B Line stations would be closed over this upcoming weekend due to construction.
The closures will begin Friday evening and will remain in place through 2 a.m. on Monday.
During the 55-hour service disruption, trains will completely bypass both the Vermont/Beverly station and the Vermont/Santa Monica stations; surface level buses will be put into place to connect the service gap, with riders being required to disembark and/or board at Vermont/Sunset and Wilshire/Vermont stations.
While this weekend’s station closures should be a rarity, the reduction to single tracks across the entire subway system is a significant blow for the tens of thousands of people who use them to commute or travel into the city for leisure on weekends and evenings.
Both the B and D Lines travel through the heart of the Los Angeles downtown area, connecting the San Fernando Valley and West L.A. to the city center.
The D Line in particular has experienced major momentum since its long-awaited extension brought the line into Beverly Hills in May.
Angelenos have raved about the convenience and affordability that the D Line extension offers, and these prolonged closures could become a frustration for those trying out L.A.’s public transit system outside of typical commuting hours.
Users on the LA Metro subreddit were particularly unenthused about the monthslong maintenance project.
“20 min frequency on each line for 4 months?!?! That’s insane,” wrote one Reddit user. “Add the C/K line never ending construction schedule and Metro really offering the most trash service in a while after consistent wins. What a shame.”
“And this is how Metro welcomes new riders who can now ride the D line extension? What a joke,” wrote another user. “[It’s] even worse that the metro is getting busier on the weekends as weekday commute patterns have shifted.”
Others had more measured, begrudging opinions.
“It sucks but we gotta grit our teeth through the maintenance,” one user wrote.
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Both the B and D lines share six stations along their respective routes, and the reduction to single tracks where they meet could potentially cause cascading delays simultaneously across both lines.
Riders should account for these potential delays and make sure they have ample time to get where they need to be and allow additional buffer to avoid missing any connecting transfers.
Real-time updates can be found at metro.net/alerts—although this specific maintenance notice had not yet been added to the page prior to the publishing of this story. Riders can also call the LA Metro customer support line at 323-466-3876.
For the fastest, most up-to-date train locations and arrival times, my personal choice is the Transit app.
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