Topline:
LA Metro’s ridership is making a comeback, almost hitting pre-pandemic levels of 1 million daily riders.
Details: In September, more than 930,000 daily passengers boarded its buses and rail services everyday in September — an increase of 10% from the previous year.
Why now: Metro attributes the increase to factors including new safety measures and students returning to school.
What's next: The department has built about 51 miles of bus lanes — with more on the way.
LA Metro’s ridership is making a comeback. Last month, more than 930,000 daily passengers boarded its buses and rail services everyday — an increase of 10% from the previous year and closing in on pre-pandemic levels.
“We're right now at about 91% of the pre-pandemic average compared to September 2019, and about 77% for our average weekday ridership, so we're closely creeping up to where we were before at over a million riders a day. We're going to continue to do more,” said Patrick Chandler, communications manager for Metro.
Chandler also says there has been a 53% drop in crime since April. He attributed the decrease to a series of measures Metro has put in, including adding both unarmed and armed officers at stations, transit ambassadors to direct passengers and report crime, and homeless outreach providing resources for unhoused individuals frequenting rails and stations.
Those safety initiatives, in addition to students returning to school, and the launch of the new regional connector in Downtown, all contributed to the rise in ridership, he says.
Metro is in its second year offering free passes to students and has been offering reduced fares to low-income riders since 2018. September is the third month since the regional connector opened in downtown, connecting rail lines including E, A and L.
The department has built about 51 miles of bus lane, Chandler said, but more are in the works with hopes to bring efficiency throughout the city’s public transportation offerings.
“[We’re] offering these opportunities for speedier, faster, more reliable bus service that might also encourage riders to get on,” he said.
Live Nation has reached a settlement with the Department of Justice over a federal antitrust lawsuit accusing the company of monopolizing the live entertainment industry, according to a report from the Associated Press. The trial, which began a week ago in a New York City courtroom, aimed to break up Live Nation and its subsidiary, Ticketmaster.
The backstory: A lawsuit filed by the Justice Department, the District of Columbia and 39 states in 2024 accused Live Nation and Ticketmaster of unfairly wielding their power over concert promotion, artist management, venue operations and ticketing services to shut out competitors. In previous comments shared with NPR, Live Nation denied the government's claims and stated that there is more competition in the ticket marketplace than ever.
Live Nation has reached a settlement with the Department of Justice over a federal antitrust lawsuit accusing the company of monopolizing the live entertainment industry, according to a report from the Associated Press. NPR has not independently confirmed the settlement. The trial, which began a week ago in a New York City courtroom, aimed to break up Live Nation and its subsidiary, Ticketmaster.
A lawsuit filed by the Justice Department, the District of Columbia and 39 states in 2024 accused Live Nation and Ticketmaster of unfairly wielding their power over concert promotion, artist management, venue operations and ticketing services to shut out competitors. The Biden-era Justice Department complaint was moved forward under the Trump administration. In previous comments shared with NPR, Live Nation denied the government's claims and stated that there is more competition in the ticket marketplace than ever.
Live Nation and the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to NPR's requests for comment.
Copyright 2026 NPR
Topline:
Eighty-eight condos could be coming to Windsor Hills after the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors overruled an appeal last week from a local residents’ advocacy group.
About the project: The five-story project, dubbed The View, would nest into the hillside between Overhill Drive and La Brea Avenue, south of Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area. The Bedford Group plans to set aside 10 of the condos for sale to moderate-income families, according to planning documents. The state defines a moderate annual income for a LA family of four as more than $127,000.
Opposition to the project: Developers have battled Windsor Hills residents for nearly a decade over building housing on the empty hilltop parcel. The View’s fiercest opposition has come from locals organized in the United Homeowner’s Association II, a nonprofit that represents any dues-paying resident of Windsor Hills, View Park and surrounding communities. The group is “extremely concerned” about the project’s effects on the local water system and its proximity to the Inglewood Oil Field and nearby earthquake fault lines, according to Angela Sherick-Bright, the nonprofit’s land use chairperson.
What' next: The board’s vote sends the project back to a county judge, according to the LA County Department of Regional Planning. Sherick-Bright said the nonprofit is weighing next steps but still is concerned about the project.
This story first appeared on The LA Local.
Eighty-eight condos could be coming to Windsor Hills after the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors overruled an appeal last week from a local residents’ advocacy group.The five-story project, dubbed The View, would nest into the hillside between Overhill Drive and La Brea Avenue, south of Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area.
Developers have battled Windsor Hills residents for nearly a decade over building housing on the empty hilltop parcel. The board’s vote sends the project back to a county judge, according to the LA County Department of Regional Planning.
The View’s fiercest opposition has come from locals organized in the United Homeowner’s Association II, a nonprofit that represents any dues-paying resident of Windsor Hills, View Park and surrounding communities. The group is “extremely concerned” about the project’s effects on the local water system and its proximity to the Inglewood Oil Field and nearby earthquake fault lines, according to Angela Sherick-Bright, the nonprofit’s land use chairperson.
“We’re not against development,” Sherick-Bright said. “If you’re going to approve a project of this magnitude, why not make sure it’s going to work for us?”
Project developer The Bedford Group did not return a request for comment, but promotional materials for the project said it was designed to “reflect the legacy of the Windsor Hills community by offering upscale workforce housing opportunities to young professionals, couples and empty nesters.”
The Bedford Group plans to set aside 10 of the condos for sale to moderate-income families, according to planning documents. The state defines a moderate annual income for a LA family of four as more than $127,000.
Susan Tae, a Planning Department assistant deputy director, said that after years of court and planning hearings, planners believe the project has taken community concerns into account.“We feel confident we’ve addressed any of the outstanding issues,” Tae said.
The county first approved the project to go ahead in 2017, according to county documents, but the residents’ group sued and a court ordered The Bedford Group to do a deeper environmental review. Bedford made attempts throughout the process to rally community support for the project, including with a 2017 video outlining the company’s take on several of the potential pitfalls raised by locals.
When the project landed back in front of supervisors on Feb. 25, it came with a fresh environmental review, but also with a renewed appeal from United Homeowner’s Association II.
Here are three concerns the residents’ group raised:
Sherick-Bright said homes in the area have struggled with weak water pressure. The nonprofit is concerned the new project could hurt the local water system, including fire hydrants, even further. Brian Barreto, a California American Water spokesperson, said computer models show 96% of hydrants in the area pump 1,000 gallons or more, above the baseline recommended by the National Fire Protection Association. Barreto also said the water company won’t give The View access to water unless The Bedford Group makes a set of mandatory system upgrades.
The View backs up closely to the Inglewood Oil Field, where the county is in the middle of a lawsuit against four oil companies for allegedly failing to plug old wells. It’s also near the Newport-Inglewood earthquake fault line. Sherick-Bright said locals are worried that digging down for a subterranean parking lot, as the project plans, could set off issues — either because of underground drilling or the fault line.“We just don’t know,” Sherick-Bright said.
The county said in planning documents that the development will require a new geotechnical review to move forward. The last such review was in 2014.
The planned project is situated just a stone’s throw away from the high-traffic Overhill-La Brea-Stocker intersection. The residents’ group argued in its written appeal that one of the project driveways that spits vehicles out onto the steep Overhill Drive was dangerously situated. Tae said that the public works department reviewed signage and striping plans for the driveway in 2024 and found they met county requirements.
Sherick-Bright said the nonprofit is weighing next steps but still is concerned about the project. The timeline for the environmental review to go before the court is not yet clear, according to Tae, the county planner. Tae said the county is actively working to address some of the resident concerns that go beyond the scope of The View project, including with the recent kickoff of its Westside Planning Area Capital Improvement Plan.
The plan is targeted at water, sewer, electrical and other infrastructure issues in some of the county’s unincorporated communities.
“It will be an important project for the community to continue to be engaged,” Tae said.
The post LA County green-lights 88-condo project in Windsor Hills despite concers from locals appeared first on LA Local.
Topline:
If you’re a gardener and you’ve found composting difficult or frustrating, you’re not alone. LAist science reporter Jacob Margolis feels that way too. So, he’s been on a mission to figure out the easiest way to deal with his family’s food waste. The catch: maggots.
Why? Black soldier fly larvae are used around the world to process food waste quickly. And most importantly for gardeners, they leave behind frass: bits and pieces of their exoskeletons and poop. The material has fertilizer profile that's similar to chicken manure.
How? Margolis has set up a home for the larvae in his yard, but there are simpler solutions that involve a bucket and patience.
Read on ... to learn how to start composting with maggots.
Do you hate composting as much as I do?
Even though I know it has benefits for both my garden and the environment, I hate turning the pile and worrying about the right ratio of greens to browns and whether it’s too wet or too dry. And it’s always dispiriting to check for loamy, wonderful compost at the bottom only to pull up chunks of vegetables from two months ago.
And before you ask about worm farms, I’ve tried them too. Let’s just say that at some point, I expect to be held accountable for my crimes against worm-kind.
But for the compost- and time-challenged like me, I think I may have found a solution that allows me to simply toss my kitchen scraps into a bin and have it turned into fertilizer in about a month.
The catch: It involves thousands of maggots.
Don’t bail just yet. I think I can convert you into a larvae lover.
Black soldier flies are dark blue and shiny, less than an inch long and don’t buzz around your head or bother you like a house fly might. They also live a handful of days, with their entire existence oriented around laying hundreds of eggs on organic waste so their larvae can go to town and start the cycle of reproduction all over again.
It’s those millimeters-long larvae that are going to speed up the composting process for us.
“Unlike earthworms, [they’re] much more tolerant of a wider range of conditions and food sources. It will eat any organic waste in the larval form,” said Kerry Mauk, associate professor of entomology at UC Riverside.
She and her colleagues recently wrote a paper that describes a food waste processing system driven by black soldier fly larvae that was largely self-sustaining for about two years. Similar systems have been used to process food waste around the world.
The larvae will eat paper, vegetables and fruits, as well as meats and animal fats (two things you're often discouraged from adding to traditional compost), breaking them down into smaller bits that can be further processed by microbes in the soil. Adding organic matter like frass to the soil can help improve soil health.
Importantly, the insect frass that’s left behind — maggot poop, as well as the bits and pieces of exoskeleton they shed as they grow — is an organic fertilizer that has a nutrient profile similar to chicken manure, she said.
The exoskeletons contain chitin — a type of sugar molecule found in the shells of crabs and lobsters that breaks down into tiny pieces over time. When detected by plants, it can prompt them to boost their immune systems in anticipation of insect attacks, making them more resilient, Mauk said.
You’ve got a lot of flexibility, depending on the size of your space and how much food waste you create.
“You don't have to make it complicated at all. It can be set-it-and-forget-it if you want it to be,” said Laura Ingwell, an associate professor of entomology at Purdue University who’s been working with black soldier flies for about a decade.
Her system is quite simple.
She fills a 50-gallon barrel with food waste, lets the soldier flies continuously go through their life cycles over the course of a year and harvests their frass when they die during the winter.
Here in Southern California, we don’t need to worry about extreme cold killing off our larvae, so we can keep our systems rolling year-round.
Your system can be as simple as a bucket or black plastic tote that you toss food waste into. Unlike a traditional compost bin, the containers need only be about a foot deep or so, as the larvae don’t travel far.
Order some black soldier fly larvae from an online store like Symton or Fluker Farms, drop them in and just keep piling more food waste on top over time.
If you don’t want to spend money on black soldier flies, you can also attract your own. Dump citrus and coffee grounds in a bucket, cover it with a screen and place a stack of cardboard pieces on top. Every few days, check the fluting on the cardboard for tiny soldier fly eggs. Once you’ve got a few, drop the cardboard into the food waste and let them eat.
My system’s going to be a bit more complicated, as I want to harvest frass repeatedly throughout the year. I’ll have three totes inside a screened-in platform. That should keep the black soldier flies in and other bugs and critters out.
As they close in on three weeks of life, I should see the pupae turn from creamy white to dark gray, and their eating will slow down. At that stage, I’ll start dropping food waste into a new container, so when the first black soldier flies emerge, they’ll mate and lay eggs on the fresh food, keeping the cycle going.
I’ll then be able to drop the first bucket of frass on my veggie garden and fruit trees.
At least, that’s how I’m hoping it’ll work.
Ingwell said they’ll eat pretty much any type of organic waste, including manure, pizza crusts and noodles or even those questionably compostable cardboard takeout containers and light green produce bags. It may take the maggots a bit longer to get through those, Ingwell said. It’s also worth experimenting on your own to see what they consume.
“ I've put a whole pack of hot dogs in there once,” Ingwell said. “ They ate it, and they got really big, but it smelled so bad. My students forbid me from ever putting hot dogs in there again because they hated dealing with the colony when they were on their hot dog diet.”
Larvae from one gram of eggs can eat approximately two pounds of food in a week and a half.
Search the internet and you’ll find all sorts of black soldier fly contraptions, like this one, which has ramps for the larvae to march up before they pupate. Ingwell said these systems often don’t work well, and she wouldn’t bother.
If the system is too wet, it may smell rancid and the larvae may try to leave. In that case, throw in some dry wood chips or paper or drain the liquid. When I first started my bin, it took the larvae a bit to get adjusted, and some fled in the process.
If you’re considering using the frass in your garden but you’re disposing of meats, you may be concerned about E. coli. To reduce the presence of microbes in the frass, you can age it for a few weeks, though contamination is an area that needs more research, Mauk said.
I’ll be documenting my journey over on YouTube, on 89.3 FM and right here at LAist.com.
If you decide to give black soldier flies a try, let us know. Send me an e-mail or comment on one of our videos.
Methane, the second-most-abundant greenhouse gas in our atmosphere, supercharges global warming, as it’s 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide when it comes to trapping heat. In the U.S., our landfills are the third-largest source of methane emissions, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency. In California, they’re the second-largest source, according to the state Air Resources Board, and food waste is a big part of that.
>> View methane emissions from landfills across the U.S.
As organic matter breaks down in oxygen-free environments — the anaerobic, stinky smell swampy waste can generate — the gas gets released. Methane emissions can be mitigated through an aerobic composting process, which is what we’re trying to do when we turn organic matter in a compost pile to make the environment more friendly to oxygen-loving microbes.
It’s one of the reasons why California has taken steps to keep 75% of food waste out of landfills.
So you can throw your green waste into your city's approved bin and have it hauled away every week. But composting effectively in your backyard has environmental benefits: The scraps don’t need to be hauled away and processed.
Of course, the biggest benefit for gardeners is that composting can help feed your plants and improve your soil.
In this edition:
Oscar film screenings, OC restaurant week, art exhibits and more of the best things to do this week.
Highlights:
When I first moved to L.A. many years ago, I had artist friends who lived in the Arts District when it was still full of unrenovated warehouses and art studios, and there wasn’t a Verve coffee or fancy sushi place in sight. So seeing inspired artist S.C. Mero’s new work — a theater inside a utility box at Third and Traction — brought me a hint of nostalgia for the old artsy downtown days. Mero’s work is always so clever, from resin-filled aquarium potholes to tiny cigarette coffins; her sense of whimsy is much needed lately!
If you lean more toward music than utility box theater, whimsy-wise, this week Lyndsey Parker at Licorice Pizza recommends the Fray in a Q&A and performance at the Grammy Museum on Monday, or indie royalty Neko Case at the Observatory in Santa Ana. Tuesday offers another compelling show to Orange County, when Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails bring their mind-blowing “Peel It Black” tour to the Honda Center. On Wednesday, dream-pop duo Phantogram start their three-night run at the Troubadour (they’ll also be there Thursday and Friday), and British soul singer-songwriter and producer KWN will play at the Belasco. Thursday is a big night, with Margo Price at the Fonda, Susanna Hoffs of The Bangles at Largo, Umphrey’s McGee at the Regent, plus Big Thief’s Buck Meek goes solo at the cool new Pasadena venue Sid the Cat Auditorium.
Elsewhere on LAist, you can read about the ever-expanding parrot population, brush up on the gubernatorial candidates and meet the woman who helped turn the Brady Bunch house into a landmark.
Opening Thursday, March 12 (through April 25)
Gagosian Gallery
456 N. Camden Drive, Beverly Hills
COST: FREE; MORE INFO
Whether you’re heading out to Indian Wells for the tennis or not, get in the courtside spirit at Gagosian, where painter Jonas Wood’s racquet-inspired work will have you ready to practice your backhand in no time. His bright, pop art colors and paintings of specific matches are bold, realistic and draw the viewer in; all of the works in this show are tennis-related — save for one that shows a video game the artist plays with his kids.
Tuesday, March 10, 8 p.m.
MOCA Grand Ave. and Walt Disney Concert Hall
Grand Ave., Downtown L.A.
COST: FREE; MORE INFO
After being blown away by South Korean artist Haegue Yang’s sculptures at Frieze L.A., I popped in last week to see her room-sized pieces that use soundscapes from the Korean composer Isang Yun, currently on display at MOCA Grand Ave. Get a completely immersive experience of her work by seeing the exhibit after hours (open from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday), then hop across the street to see the L.A. Phil perform Yun’s musical composition, Double Concerto for oboe, harp and small orchestra. The L.A. Phil event is sold out, but a standby line will form in the Disney Hall lobby; the MOCA exhibit is on (and free for all) through Aug. 2.
Through Saturday, March 14
Various Orange County locations
COST: VARIES; MORE INFO
Get great deals at some Orange County favorites and newcomers, with prix-fixe lunches and dinners all across the area, from Anaheim to Newport Beach and everywhere in between.
Monday, March 9, 6 p.m.
Online
COST: FREE; MORE INFO
Just the name of this meditation session had me stop to say, "Yes, yes, that sounds like a good idea for everyone." If it’s all been a lot lately, learn some key meditation skills at this free online class with Doug Frankel, run through the Westwood Brand library. Sign up and get the Zoom link by emailing here.
Wednesday, March 11, 8 p.m.
O’Brien's Pub
2226 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica
COST: FREE; MORE INFO
You may think you know something about the Oscars, but I’d bone up on my trivia before going up against the movie know-it-alls (and many, many Jeopardy! champs) who head to the annual Oscars quiz at O’Brien’s. It's a popular trivia night, so get there early, pick your teammates (up to six on each team) wisely and watch some winners to prep (but maybe skip Crash).
Monday, March 9, 7 p.m.
Academy Museum
6067 Wilshire Blvd., Miracle Mile
COST: $10; MORE INFO
Sure, many of the shorts are now available on streaming services, but there’s joy in seeing these clever short films with an audience and supporting the indie filmmakers behind them. The Academy Museum, of course, is screening many of the harder-to-find nominated films this season; Monday is the live action shorts, but check the calendar for docs, animated shorts and more ahead of the weekend’s big ceremony.
Through May 2026
Wrensilva
8625 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood
COST: FREE; MORE INFO
It’s not often I recommend a brand experience here, but Wrensilva makes record players — by hand — and as someone with a small vinyl collection and a soft spot for local craftspeople and old things, this is just very cool. You can visit Wrensilva’s gallery and studio and listen to records at their space. Plus, they have an art show through May featuring the photography of Danny Clinch, who’s shot some of the rock world’s most recognizable album covers, including for Blind Melon, Johnny Cash, Tupac and the Foo Fighters.
