u/misken67

Some of you may know that every year, I submit a public records request to Metro for their station-level ridership figures. As I continue to wait for Metro to finish sending me all of the ridership numbers for FY2026 (July 2025 - June 2026), I figured I’d analyze some of the numbers that I have been given in the meantime.

Service headways have always been interesting to me. As we all know, as frequency increases, ridership typically goes up. The service is seen as more useful and desirable due to less waiting, so more people ride.

What’s interesting about summer 2025 was that two events happened simultaneously that made analyzing the ridership on the B/D lines fascinating:

• The D line was closed from May 17 - July 25, 2025, during which the B line increased frequencies from the original 12 minutes to 8 minutes.
• The ICE raids began in June, causing a systemwide cratering of ridership that particularly affected buses, but also depressed rail ridership on all lines.

Here is what I found: in July 2025, the first month of this fiscal year and second full month of 8 min frequencies, B line-only stations saw higher ridership year-over-year despite the ICE raids causing rail ridership to generally fall across the rest of the system. I used YoY calculations instead of month-over-month to account for any seasonal fluctuations.

Some notes before I dive deeper into the data:

• I used individual station-level ridership for this analysis, not the topline figures for each line that Metro publishes. 
• These numbers are average weekday boardings.
• Metro’s published ridership for the combined B/D lines showed that July 2025 ridership was lower compared to July 2024. This might seem contradictory to my findings, but I’ll explain how the topline figures masked important trends in the station-level numbers.
• I’m not a data scientist. The highest level education I received on the subject was a college intro methods course. If I’ve done anything wrong or there are better ways to test the data, please let me know!

Deeper dive:

In July 2025, B line-only stations saw an YoY average increase of 174 boardings per station. Every station saw increases except for Beverly. The B/D shared stations saw decreases because:

• The shared segment with the D line actually experienced a decrease in frequency (from a combined 6 minutes to 8 minutes)
• 7th/Metro and Union Station additionally serve significant connecting services that saw a decrease in ridership during the ICE raids

At the same time (July YoY), the rest of the Metro Rail system saw an average decrease of 61 riders per station. This is likely attributable to the ICE raids, and the station-level data show the sharpest decrease in some communities with higher immigrant populations, primarily in South LA along the southern A line. (I’ll do another write up on this).

I used a Welch’s t-test because the two sample sizes (B line-only stations v. the rest of the system) are so different in size. The t-test helps determine if there is a statistically significant difference in the ridership change between the two sample sizes during the tested period (July YoY). I arrived at a p-value of 0.008, indicating that the B line’s ridership growth was statistically significantly higher than the rest of the system. (No surprise)

Furthermore, when frequencies returned to 12 mins in August, B line station ridership plummeted an average of 135 per station YoY, seemingly belatedly catching up to the ICE effect plaguing the rest of the system. The rest of the system saw an average decrease of 62 boardings per station, YoY. I got a p-value of 0.013 using a Welch’s t-test, showing that B line-only stations plummeted at a statistically significantly greater level than the rest of the system.

So not only did ridership on the B line-only stations resist the ICE effect in July, but ridership on those stations plummeted particularly hard in August when frequencies returned to 12 minutes.

This shows that even as the ICE raids depressed ridership across the Metro rail system, increased headways on the B line of just four minutes was enough to not only counteract the ICE effect, but lead to statistically significant increases in ridership. Of course, correlation =/= causation, but I can’t think of another variable relevant to this period. I will admit that the sample size of the B line-only stations (8) is quite small, which means that other variables might have an outsized effect that I’m undervaluing (such as, perhaps, Hollywood having a smaller immigrant ridership than the rest of the system, but I think I sufficiently accounted for this by testing August as well)

A final note on Metro’s published topline figures. Metro publishes combined B/D ridership on its portal, with July 2024 seeing 65,590 daily weekday boardings and July 2025 seeing a much lower 59,417. So how does that square with my conclusion that B line stations saw significantly increased boardings in July 2025 over July 2024? Because of two factors:

• Metro publishes combined B/D ridership. When the D line was closed, ridership on Wilshire/Western and Wilshire/Normandie was zero in July 2025.
• The shared B/D trunk stations saw frequency decrease from a combined 6 minutes to 8 minutes, and correspondingly saw lower ridership.

Here is the data if you want to explore it yourself.

Not sure how long it will last, be prepared to be delayed 10 minutes. This is what I mean when I complain that Metro is bad at issuing service alerts on a timely manner to let people know what's going on, especially on weekends

Sounds official, we've now got a fox in the henhouse. Board reform is necessary now.

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Hello all. FY 2026 (July 2025-June 2026) just concluded so it's time for my yearly ridership by station updates. You can see my update from last year here (brt only) and here.

As many of you know, Metro does not publicly release ridership figures by station, so I have to submit a public records request for these numbers. They were very quick this year in responding to me, but unfortunately (like last year), they did not send me the complete rail dataset. But since I have the complete Busway ridership figures (G/J), I figured I might as well release them. For full transparency, I've shared the numbers on Google Sheets here (both the raw data and my pivot table), please let me know if you spot any typos or calculation errors!

Not a great year for the Busways. J Line had a great year last year but it has mostly plateaued this year, with most stations experiencing small drops. The J Line had an extremely strong September and has mostly been sliding downhill since, with a brief and small bump in the winter. And the G Line is building off of an already bad 2025 to drop even lower, primarily driven by the very important grade separation construction going on in Van Nuys. It's too bad they didn't grade separate Sepulveda at the same time to avoid future disruptions like this.

I'm not a regular busway rider myself, so if others have thoughts about these dynamics, please chime in!

Edit: Laurel Canyon is supposed to be a 0.1% decrease! My mistake.

Does this mean no new thrones will be added to new stations? Or no second throne at Little Tokyo?

Tldr; City Council pushed back against the planning staff who wanted to exempt all areas from SB 79 until 2031. They took a "middle-ground" path of exempting historic areas until a plan (TODAP) is adopted, single family and duplex/triplex zoned areas for 18 months. They did not exempt multifamily zoned areas from being up zoned to SB 79 rules, which staff wanted.

Nearly all public speakers urged council to implement SB 79 immediately.

The D line is amazing. The problem is what to do after. I commute to Century City, and even though the D line is faster than the E line, neither make it all the way to Century City, so I have to transfer.

From the E line there's several combinations of Big Blue Bus Culver City Bus, and Metro to get me to work.

From the D line, it is 20/720>4, that's it.

Now that I have a week of commuting under my belt, I can say that when the transfers work well, the commute is so nice. But that has only happened once.

Today was the worst. My morning transfer to the 4 was 16 minutes. My evening transfer to the 20/720 was a 25 minute wait during rush hour when the bus is supposed to come every 5 minutes. The first 720 was so crowded that the driver skipped our stop.

With these wait times, my reliable big blue bus or green Culver buses to the slow E line is easily faster, and it's not even a close competition.

Someone in this thread had asked earlier this week how the century city commute was, and I replied that it was not bad. After today, I think I'm switching back to my E line until the D extends even further. Even if it is slower, at least everything runs on schedule.

Everyone was tapping to exit and I didn't bother to try seeing if the gates would swing open like at other stations, so not sure if this is active yet. But they've got a bunch of signs up telling people to tap to exit at Wilshire/La Cienega

Lots of people including myself were wondering if we would be able to get on the 20/720 at La Cienega or if we were going to have to walk to Stanley.

Can confirm that the 20/720 bus stop sign was installed on the far side of the intersection eastbound, and buses were stopping right in front of the station westbound, although signs were not installed yet.

Something happened at Highland Park, my train is turning back at South Pasadena and they're calling for a bus bridge, according to my southbound A conductor just now.

No service alerts posted yet.

Edit: service alert: train-person incident :(