Even on its busiest days,
LA Metro’s K line is empty. About 6 months after it opened in October
2022, only about 2000 riders per day use it. Now when you ride the K line, there
doesn’t really seem to be anything wrong with it. The stations are clean
and modern. Trains come every 10 minutes. Stations feature art that showcases the history
and culture of the surrounding neighborhoods. But even though transit ridership in LA has
generally been struggling due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, reduced service, and
concerns about rider safety, 2,000 riders per day is incredibly low, especially for America’s
second-largest city. It’s lower than most of Metro’s bus routes, but took 8 years and cost
2.1 billion dollars to build. So what happened? Well, the short answer is that it
doesn’t really go anywhere–yet. Now, of course the K line does go places. It was
built to serve the densely populated Crenshaw Corridor, the city of Inglewood, and LAX—all
places that need high-quality transit connections. But the line isn’t fully open yet, with only 7 of
9 stations seeing service and no direct airport connection. This is because the future LAX Station
is still under construction, which prevents the line from going south of Westchester. A temporary
bus shuttle connects this station with the C line at Aviation/LAX. And a different bus shuttle is
required to get from that station to the airport. In a year or so, the K line will connect
and run on the tracks of the C line in one of these service patterns that the LA Metro
board has yet to choose. The future LAX station isn’t quite at the airport, but riders will use an
automated peoplemover to travel toward the gates. But for now, the lack of a direct airport
connection really hurts the K line’s ridership potential. LAX has over 50,000 employees
and over 60 million yearly passengers. Without LAX, most of the attractive
destinations on the K line are near the northern few stations, but this
area is already well-served by buses, where several come more
frequently than the train does. So why did this route get chosen?
Why did the K line open without its much-anticipated airport connection?
And why didn’t the K line go directly to SoFi stadium and the other multi-billion dollar
entertainment venues being built in Inglewood? To answer these questions, we must look
far back at the history of the corridor. This starts with the old LA railway,
whose 5 train ran along a similar route. In 1955, streetcars were
replaced with bus service. In the 1960s, the route was studied for rapid
transit as part of a countywide system similar to BART in the Bay Area. The Crenshaw corridor
would have been part of an airport-southwest line that would connect LAX to Downtown
LA, but these plans never materialized. In the 90s, rail transit was studied once
again in response to the 1992 LA uprising, since upgraded transit could improve quality of
life for one of LA’s largest black communities. The 1993 “Crenshaw-Prairie preliminary planning
study” envisioned rail or an improved bus corridor starting at the Pico / Rimpau transit center and
ending at either LAX or the Hawthorne Plaza Mall. 5 of the 6 alternatives would have provided
transfers to three rapid transit lines: the under-construction C line in the median
of the 105 freeway, the exposition light rail corridor which would later become the E line,
and a never-built extension of the D line subway. Several different modes were considered
such as fully underground subway, at-grade light rail, elevated light rail,
trolleybus, and automated aerial metro. The other studied alternative was light rail to
LAX, which would follow the old Santa Fe harbor subdivision. The result of the 1993 study
was to move forward with 3 alternatives: the aerial north-south light rail, the
north-south subway, and the light rail to LAX. In the following years, the subway
option was dropped due to high cost, and the two light rail options were merged into a
forked route, with branches going to LAX and the Hawthorne Plaza Mall. No funding was immediately
available to build the line, but LA Metro and city leaders continued studying the route to
better prepare it for potential federal money. In 1997, the University of Southern California
School of Architecture teamed up with the LA county MTA to envision station designs along
the corridor, with an emphasis of how they could be a catalyst for economic development.
Many of these designs were highly aspirational, featuring geodesic domes, pyramids, grand
mezzanines, and giant awnings. They would have been overbuilt for their function, but it’s
fascinating to see the scale of these concepts. None of these designs really had a meaningful
impact on the final design of the K line, but I find them to be a fascinating aspirational
vision of the future that was never realized. In the 2000s, Metro would refine the K line’s
route to prepare for funding and construction. They dropped the branch down Prairie to
cut costs. They kept the branch to LAX because of higher ridership projections, and
because it integrated better with the C line, which was built with a partially constructed
junction to facilitate an LAX connection. They also decided to not yet build
north to connect to the D line subway, which was now being extended to the west side
instead of the Pico/Rimpau transit center. They did, however, decide that this future
northern connection would someday happen at Wilshire/La Brea, though no funding was
available to do so in the initial construction. In January 2014, ground was broken on
the K line, which would now feature 8 new stations between the Expo/Crenshaw E line
station and the Aviation/LAX C line station. The connection to LAX was not yet finalized, as Metro and the LA airport authority were
still deciding whether they would further extend the light rail directly to the airport,
or rely on a connection to a peoplemover that was planned to connect the airport to a
future consolidated rental car facility. By June 2014, Metro decided on a peoplemover
connection at Aviation and 96th street since it would offer the fastest travel times and was
far cheaper than another light rail extension. It would also keep trips faster for
riders that wanted to ride past LAX. One interesting detail is how close the
LAX station will be to the not-yet-opened Aviation/Century station that was a part
of the K line’s original construction. This is because Metro planned it long before
the peoplemover route was even chosen, and later thought they could connect the
station to the peoplemover via a short walkway. However, Metro’s board of directors,
which was recently shaken up due to Eric Garcetti becoming mayor in 2013, was
not satisfied with this planned connection. They wanted the transfer between the K line and
the LAX peoplemover to be as short as possible, which necessitated a new station only .4 miles
away from Aviation/Century. As a condition of their approval of the station, the LA Metro board
set several requirements like public restrooms, public art, and a grand concourse to
make it a sort of grand gateway to LAX. So after all this was figured out, the
original plan was to build the K line, open it in 2019, then temporarily sever the
line a few years later to construct the LAX station in time for the airport peoplemover’s
planned 2023 opening. But since the K line’s construction took three years longer than
expected due to bad work by the contractor, the southern part of the line never opened.
Instead, construction on the airport station began immediately after the contractor in
charge of the K line handed it over to Metro. Since the new LAX station was to have a center
platform far wider than the space between the tracks as originally planned, one set of tracks
would have to be cut out and moved. And this couldn’t happen until all testing was completed
from the first phase of K line construction. In 2015, St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke
announced plans to develop a 70,240-seat NFL stadium in Inglewood as part of his plan
to bring the Rams back to Los Angeles. The project was able to bypass environmental
review using a loophole, and ground broke in 2016. By this time, the K line’s construction
was well underway, but would not really serve the stadium despite running
about a mile from it. In 2016, the LA Metro board of directors ordered staff
to study a transit connection to the stadium. 4 options were considered. One would have been
an extension of the K line that would branch off south of the Fairview Heights station and would
travel in a tunnel beneath Prairie Avenue. This option would be eliminated due to high cost and
negative impacts to the K line’s service pattern. Another option was to build a separate urban
tram system connecting the Downtown Inglewood station to the stadium. And the other two
options would have built a peoplemover connecting to the LAX K line station, but would
operate separately from the airport peoplemover. Eventually, option 1 was chosen as the best
route, but was changed from an urban tram to an automated peoplemover to avoid conflicts with
traffic. Inglewood took over the project planning from Metro, and thus the Inglewood Transit
Connector was born. Further study narrowed the project down to 3 stations: a station in
downtown Inglewood to connect to the K line, a station at Prairie and Manchester to connect
to the Kia Forum, and a station at Prairie and Hardy to connect to SoFi stadium and the future
Intuit Dome basketball arena. And a second phase could someday connect the peoplemover
to the Hawthorne/Lennox C line station. As of May 2023, the final technology for this
transit connector has not yet been chosen, but it would either be the same Alstom
Innovia system used for the airport peoplemover, a Doppelmayr cable-pulled
peoplemover, or a BYD battery-powered monorail. And yes, that’s the same
BYD monorail technology that’s being considered for LA’s Sepulveda pass transit
project. But all three would feature small, fully automated trains that come as
frequently as every 2 minutes on event days. When SoFi stadium was finished in 2020, the K line
wasn’t open yet, and the last-mile connection to the stadium via the peoplemover was years off.
But the stadium’s planners had already prioritized cars over transit by building thousands of
parking spaces, and wide roads connecting them to the nearby freeways. However, this is clearly
not working well. Gameday traffic is notoriously terrible, where it can take over an hour to
even get out of the parking lot afterwards. Now there is a free game day shuttle
that connects the C line to the stadium, and an express bus from the Harbor Gateway
transit center, but only a small portion of guests have been taking advantage of these
options. The city buses serving the stadium are almost useless when they get stuck in traffic.
There's no doubt that connecting the stadium to high-capacity transit would be an attractive
option for people attending or working at events. I don’t think that stadiums and entertainment
districts need to be the highest priority in a transit system. Sports games and events don’t
happen every day, which means ridership won’t be as high as transit that goes to places where lots
of people live and work. But building transit to places like Inglewood is politically popular, and
can be so much more than a “train to a game” if the areas surrounding the stadium are walkable.
Housing and green space could easily transform the parking lots into somewhere more livable, and
drive year-round transit ridership. This is simply something that needs to happen to justify the $1.6
billion pricetag for the Inglewood Peoplemover. The sea of parking spaces isn’t much different
than how the Hollywood Park Racetrack was before SoFi stadium was constructed. But you’d
think after spending billions of dollars and permanently changing Inglewood in so
many ways, we could have something better. In the long term, developers plan to build
housing and hotels in SoFi stadium’s parking lots, and construct walkable plazas that
connect to the peoplemover stations. But it’s already clear that this new development will
not integrate well into Inglewood’s urban fabric. It will be a lot like the Las Vegas strip, where
you can walk between expensive touristy areas, but won’t be encouraged to go outside of that. And residents living in the luxury
apartments next to the stadium will have to get in their cars and drive outside
to get groceries or go to their jobs. But if a train to Inglewood were a
priority instead of an afterthought, the stadium’s construction could have placed
less emphasis on cars to create a livable, vibrant place instead of a sea of concrete. Maybe the whole situation surrounding
the Inglewood entertainment district is a testament to how capital and
political connections are what really drive change in our cities instead
of comprehensive regional planning. Or maybe just a testament to how slow Metro builds
things in comparison to private development. But it doesn’t make any sense that the K line and
Inglewood Peoplemover had to go through years of environmental review, studying things like traffic
impacts and parking, while SoFi stadium did not. But that is why the K line doesn’t go
to LAX or SoFi stadium in Inglewood, and instead will rely on connections to two separate
peoplemover systems to get to those destinations. Now there are plenty of other reasons why the
K line doesn’t quite live up to its potential. Like bad land use near stations, a
lack of transit oriented development, bad connecting bus service at the south end of
the line, and unsafe streets that don’t encourage walking or biking to stations. And the Inglewood
Peoplemover is due to make the same mistakes by building hundreds of parking spaces instead
of homes or hotels near some of its stations. But it’s just so fascinating how a lack of
coordination and regional planning led to some truly important connections lagging years
behind the K line’s original opening date. As for the future, the Aviation/Century and
LAX/Metro transit center stations should open sometime next year, providing a connection to
the LAX airport peoplemover, which is also set to open sometime next year. When SoFi stadium
was announced in Inglewood, the city pushed for a new grade separation project at Centinela
Avenue as an attempt to mitigate gameday traffic. This would have disrupted service on the K
line for another couple years, but the city is now trying to cancel it to redirect the funds
toward the Inglewood Transit Connector project. If they are able to do this, construction should
start next year, and it would start running sometime in 2028. In a similar timeframe,
the K line stations that were originally part of the C line in El Segundo will have their
platforms extended and power systems upgraded, which will allow 3-car trains to run on the K
line. Also, Metro might run some C line trains to downtown Inglewood on game days to better
connect with the Inglewood transit connector. By 2033, Metro hopes to extend
the C or K line south 4.5 miles, adding two stations in Redondo Beach and Torrance. Looking further out, Metro wants to extend the
K line north to Hollywood. It would run on one of these three alignments, and would finally
connect the K line to the D line subway, then continue north to connect with the B line subway,
and end at the Hollywood bowl. The project would be transformational, and add as many as 90,000
daily riders to the K line. It probably won’t get built anytime soon, as sales tax funding won’t be
available for the project until the early 2040s. But a coalition in the city of West Hollywood
wants to accelerate the project using funding from real estate development. This would also mean
that the longest and most expensive option for the project, called the San Vicente-Fairfax
hybrid alignment, will probably be chosen. Just recently, Metro announced that they would
likely build this northern extension in phases, with the first phase connecting to
the D line on Wilshire Boulevard. Even just this shorter section would substantially
improve the K line’s connectivity and ridership. So despite everything that has led to initial low
ridership, the K line represents a turning point for LA metro’s rail transit system. It won’t be
a game changer or a silver bullet for regional transportation, but it will soon provide a useful
connection to the airport, and is a starting point for the full length K line that would
connect to some of LA’s densest neighborhoods. This is only the second LA metro rail
line that doesn’t go to Downtown LA, and is just the beginning of a larger grid-like
system. The K line might not be much right now because of some earlier oversights,
but we just have to keep building it.
