Topline:
After years of planning and construction, the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced this week that the new LAX/Metro Transit Center station will open on June 6.
Why it matters: The stop will bring train passengers closer to the airport — but not quite there, yet.
Read on ... to find out more about the new Metro stop and how it fits in to the agency's plan to connect the train system to LAX.
After years of planning and construction, the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced this week that the new LAX/Metro Transit Center station will open on June 6. The stop will bring train passengers closer to the airport — but not quite there, yet.
The new stop is located between Aviation Boulevard and 96th Street. Two trains will run through the station: the C and K lines.
In order to reach the airport, passengers will still need to exit the station and board buses that will shuttle travelers to terminals every 10 minutes. That will change in early 2026, when the Los Angeles World Airports plans to complete work on the Automated People Mover, which will directly connect train riders with the airport.
LAX is ranked as the world’s seventh busiest airport. About 200,000 travelers pass through it daily. But without convenient train access, the airport has become a notorious traffic vortex.
Transit officials hope to finish LAX’s direct light rail connection before major international events, including the 2026 FIFA World Cup and the 2028 Olympics.
Topline:
Los Angeles is in high-stakes talks over what city services the private Olympics organizing committee will pay for during the Olympic Games, and negotiations have dragged nearly three months past a deadline to make a deal.
Why it matters: City funds could hang in the balance. The 2028 Olympics are intended to be privately financed, and an existing city agreement with LA28 states that the Olympics organizers, not L.A., will pay for extra costs for public services in support of the Games.
Why now: The nuts and bolts of that arrangement have not been finalized, despite an Oct. 1 deadline.
What do we know: Neither the city nor LA28 have shared publicly what's holding up the deal. But the Dec. 8 City Council meeting hinted at potential sticking points. One could be the boundaries of where LA28's responsibility for a service like traffic control ends and the city's responsibility begins.
Read on... for other concerns around the agreement.
When L.A. hosts the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the city will need to mobilize police, fire, transit and traffic control to put on more than a month of competitions and celebrations.
The question is — who will pay for all that extra work?
Los Angeles is in high-stakes talks over what city services the private Olympics organizing committee will pay for during the Olympic Games, and negotiations have dragged nearly three months past a deadline to make a deal.
City funds could hang in the balance. The 2028 Olympics are intended to be privately financed, and an existing city agreement with LA28 states that the Olympics organizers, not L.A., will pay for extra costs for public services in support of the Games.
But the nuts and bolts of that arrangement have not been finalized, despite an Oct. 1 deadline.
City Administrative Officer Matthew Szabo, who is leading negotiations on the city's behalf along with the chief legislative analyst, acknowledged that the deal was past due at a City Council committee meeting on the Olympics earlier this month.
"It is of great significance to the city, and getting it right takes precedence," Szabo said. "We are working as quickly as we can, but this needs to be the right agreement for the city."
If the agreement leaves L.A. exposed to unexpected or additional expenses, taxpayers could end up paying many millions. Organizers have said that putting on the Olympic and Paralympic Games is the equivalent of hosting seven Super Bowls every day for a month.
Neither the city nor LA28 have shared publicly what's holding up the deal. But the Dec. 8 City Council meeting hinted at potential sticking points.
One could be the boundaries of where LA28's responsibility for a service like traffic control ends and the city's responsibility begins.
Down the line, the city will need to negotiate individual agreements with LA28 about what public services it will provide at each Olympic venue in the city. The scope of those agreements will be based on venue perimeters. Some in the city appear to be concerned about how those perimeters will be determined and what happens if public services are needed outside of those boundaries.
Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky raised this as a potential problem to the city administrative officer at the council meeting.
" If we're only getting reimbursed for services within the venue services agreements, does that mean that anything outside of venue perimeter isn't subject to reimbursement?" she said. "Even if costs arise due to a material impact from the Games or the venue perimeters themselves?"
Szabo responded by saying the city agreed that the broader scope of what resources might be required should be included. But he acknowledged that there was an argument for a narrower interpretation.
" Now, another way to look at it, and I do need to be clear about this, is that the general condition of hosting the games may require additional services in other areas," he said.
Councilmember Bob Blumenfield said he thought additional costs to the city seemed inevitable. He offered an example: If a protest took place outside an Olympic training facility — a location that could be considered outside the list of official Olympic venues.
" We're going to have controversies at some of these places, and I view that as inextricably linked to the events," he said. "That also means protests, which also means sanitation. … Some of these ancillary sites that are not direct venue sites are going to end up with enhanced costs to us as a city."
A spokesperson for LA28 didn't answer a series of questions from LAist, including where expected costs on city services are included in its $7 billion budget. The organizing committee did provide a statement saying it was "committed to delivering these historic Games in a safe, secure and fiscally responsible way."
The other source of funding that the city expects to receive for its resources will come from the federal government, which has allocated $1 billion for security costs. Szabo told the council committee that city spending on security at the Olympic venues, like for local police, should be covered by those funds.
But exactly how much federal money the city of Los Angeles will actually get is yet to be determined.
Hosting the Games is an enormous financial risk for Los Angeles. The city is the financial backstop for the Olympic Games, meaning if the organizing committee runs into the red, L.A. will pick up the bill, along with the state of California.
The extra staff and resources the city will dedicate to the Games represents another area where L.A. may end up with surprise costs.
The specter of these potential expenses has dogged the city for months. In July, prominent civil rights attorney Connie Rice wrote a letter to Mayor Karen Bass saying knowledgeable city officials had told her the city was negotiating a bad deal with LA28.
Rice pointed specifically to the boundaries of Olympic venues, claiming LA28 was advocating for narrower venue perimeters "narrowly confined to the physical buildings and immediate sidewalks of the venue." She said the city's broader understanding of venue perimeters that will need city services could leave a substantial gap in funding that would leave the city exposed.
Reached by phone, Rice said her concerns remain the same. She called the city's dealings "incompetent."
" I know 10th graders who plan their prom better than this," she said of city officials. "Their mission is to look good. Their mission isn't to protect the taxpayers."
Topline:
Whether you love Waymo’s self-driving cars, or love to hate them, the vehicles are becoming more and more common throughout the Los Angeles area — including on freeways.
We teamed up to take a roundtrip Waymo ride from downtown to the Arlington Heights neighborhood of L.A.
Why now: Waymo announced last month that it would offer select freeway trips in L.A.’s 120-square-mile service area. Freeways are actually easier for self-driving cars to maneuver than surface streets, according to Rahul Jain, professor and director of the USC Center of Autonomy and AI.
Read on ... for more of LAist's freeway route review.
Whether you love Waymo’s self-driving cars, or love to hate them, the vehicles are becoming more and more common throughout the Los Angeles area — including on freeways.
When Waymo announced last month that it would offer select freeway trips in L.A.’s 120-square-mile service area, my colleague Kevin Tidmarsh and I knew we’d be reuniting for another round of rides. We took a test trip on city streets last fall.
Admittedly, I’ve been nervous about trusting the autonomous tech, especially at higher speeds and merging in our region’s infamous traffic.
But freeways are actually easier for self-driving cars to maneuver than surface streets, according to Rahul Jain, professor and director of the USC Center of Autonomy and AI.
“City driving is more challenging because there are pedestrians and bicyclists and lights and stop signs and whatnot,” Jain told LAist. “On a freeway, it's relatively unencumbered.”
We teamed up to take a roundtrip Waymo ride from downtown to the Arlington Heights neighborhood of L.A.
According to the company, riders who have opted into Waymo’s freeway list on the app will be matched with those routes when they’re “meaningfully faster,” so we chose destinations with the guidelines in mind.
We called the first ride shortly after 10 a.m. on a Friday to take us from downtown’s Sante Fe Avenue to the intersection of Washington Boulevard and Bronson Avenue in Arlington Heights. The Waymo took about 6 minutes to arrive and cost a little more than $17.
We called the second ride back downtown shortly after 10:30 a.m. The car took 7 minutes to arrive and cost a little more than $15, which was both quicker and cheaper than our test rides from downtown to Koreatown last year.
Our Waymo got on the 10 Freeway in downtown almost immediately, speeding up to a smooth 34 mph to merge into flowing traffic.
Waymo then moved a few lanes over to the left as it accelerated to 55 mph, squeezing between human-driven cars — and using its blinker every time.
“A lot of people could take notes,” Kevin said during the ride.
The autonomous car made some driving decisions like a seasoned Angeleno, using thru-traffic lanes around freeway off-ramps to bypass stalled traffic.
Kevin, who takes that route often, said Waymo picked the "absolute safest way” to go.
As we exited the freeway onto a packed off-ramp, Waymo was able to merge into the turning lane (although, it did cut a line of cars).
Once we were back on city streets, I was curious how Waymo would handle a run-in with emergency vehicles, especially after one of the cars drove toward a police standoff in downtown L.A. last month. A video shows a Waymo, with a passenger inside, turning toward a man lying on the ground in front of a line of officers with guns drawn and lights flashing.
But our car slowed to a stop until the ambulance, its siren blaring, passed by in the opposite direction.
Waymo topped out around 55 mph for the first leg of our freeway trip, which was noticeably slower than other cars that passed us on the right.
But, as Kevin pointed out during the ride, maybe Waymo’s technology was seeing something we couldn’t. Traffic tightened up less than a mile ahead, and dropping back down to 25 mph felt like a smooth transition.
The biggest snafu was when Waymo seemed to get a bit confused by the freeway lanes toward the end of our trip. The car suddenly jerked to the left as if it was trying to merge before retreating back into the far right lane.
“ What is going on,” I said, several times.
“ Thinking with its steering wheel, it seems like,” Kevin replied.
It repeated the move two more times, without any obvious hazards or obstacles ahead.
Overall, we were pleasantly surprised with the Waymo freeway rides.
Kevin noted there were a couple of hiccups, including the sudden steering, but the driving was generally smooth and the car seemed to adjust to the various conditions we encountered.
I felt like Waymo handled the stop-and-go traffic better than I would’ve behind the wheel, and both Kevin and I agreed it felt like the autonomous technology has made notable improvements since our last test ride.
“ When it can take me on the Arroyo Seco through Highland Park, then, then I will give everything to our robot overlords,” I joked during the ride. “If it can do the stop sign on-ramp onto 60 miles per hour of that freeway … I'll never drive again.”
Topline:
The Trump administration is suing to block a new California that would ban federal law enforcement officers from wearings masks on duty. It was shaped by concerns over masked immigration agents in Los Angeles.
Why it matters: The state law gives law enforcement officers a choice: If they cover their faces, they lose the ability to assert “qualified immunity,” the doctrine that protects officers from individual liability for their actions. That means they can be sued for assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest or malicious prosecution, and the law adds a clause that says the minimum penalty for committing those offenses while wearing a mask is $10,000.
Exemptions: The law provides exemptions for N-95 or medical-grade masks to prevent infection transmission, and permits undercover operatives to wear a mask.
Read on... for more about the new law in January.
A series of immigration raids across California in 2025 had one thing in common: Most of the federal agents detaining people wore masks over their faces.
In January, the state of California and its largest county will ban law enforcement officers from covering their faces, with a few exceptions, putting local and state police at odds with masked immigration agents.
The state law gives law enforcement officers a choice: If they cover their faces, they lose the ability to assert “qualified immunity,” the doctrine that protects officers from individual liability for their actions. That means they can be sued for assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest or malicious prosecution, and the law adds a clause that says the minimum penalty for committing those offenses while wearing a mask is $10,000.
Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez, a Los Angeles Democrat who co-authored the law, said it was necessary to rein in anonymous federal agents.
“We initially were under the understanding that, oh, they're only targeting folks who were not citizens,” Gonzalez said, “And then actually over time you learn they don't give a shit who you are, they're attacking you no matter what, with no due process.”
The Trump administration has sued to block the bill, and more than a century of federal court precedent is on its side. An 1890 Supreme Court case provides that a state cannot prosecute a federal law enforcement officer acting in the course of their duties.
The Trump administration said in its brief to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California that forcing agents to reveal their identities would put the agents at risk.
During Immigration and Customs Enforcement “actions, individuals can be heard threatening to doxx and find out who officers and their family members are and where they live,” the administration’s lawyers said in the Nov. 17 brief. “There are even public websites that seek and publish personal information about ICE and other federal officers to harass and threaten them and their families.”
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, said the issue may not be as cut-and-dried as one or two Supreme Court cases. He pointed to a 2001 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that allowed the case of a federal sniper who killed a woman during the 1992 Ruby Ridge, Idaho, standoff to go to trial.
“It basically says that a federal officer can be criminally prosecuted for unreasonable actions,” Chemerinsky said. “Federal officers, by virtue of being federal officers, do not get immunity from all state civil and criminal laws.”
Brian Marvel, president of an organization that represents California police unions, said the law will make life harder for local cops and county sheriffs’ deputies. The organizations that represent police chiefs, sheriffs, agents in the Attorney General’s office and California Highway Patrol officers opposed the law, too.
“I think that the state has put us in a tenuous position with this battle they’re having with the Trump administration,” said Marvel of the Peace Officers Research Association of California. “We don’t want to be in the middle of this fight. But unfortunately, (with) the desire for higher name recognition and elections in 2026, they decided to create things that are much more political and not geared toward legitimate public safety issues.”
Marvel said another drawback of the law is giving “a false sense of hope to the immigrant community in California” that the law will force federal agents to leave the state.
Los Angeles County supervisors have also approved a local mask ban on law enforcement for unincorporated areas of the county, a measure that will go into effect in mid-January, unless a court decision comes sooner.
Gonzalez noted that masks have played a significant role in recent California history. First,, during the pandemic California temporarily made masks mandatory in public and at work. Then, a couple of years later, a rush of smash-and-grab robberies were harder to solve because the suspects all wore masks. Now, California finds itself in its third back-and-forth over face coverings.
The law provides exemptions for N-95 or medical-grade masks to prevent infection transmission, and permits undercover operatives to wear a mask.
“This is specifically aimed to federal agents because we gotta combat these kidnappings somehow,” Gonzalez said, “and this was our way in.”
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
Topline:
California's planet-warming pollution shrank by 3% in 2023, one of the largest year-over-year reductions the state has seen, according to a report by nonprofit Next 10.
The findings: The state’s use of cleaner fuels in heavy-duty transportation, like big rigs, and its deployment of battery storage and solar energy drove this climate progress, in large part. The report found that fossil fuels supplied just 36.3% of the state’s electricity in 2024, an all-time low, and renewables surpassed 50% of the energy that powers California’s grid.
More work to be done: Researchers said that while the data is encouraging, California policymakers and regulators need to do more to hit the state’s 2030 goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40% below 1990 levels. That would require an average annual emissions reduction rate of 4.4%, a number far higher than historic annual reductions. For the state to reach its even more ambitious 2045 emissions goal — of 85% below 1990 levels — California would have to double that reduction rate.
California’s planet-warming pollution shrank by 3% in 2023, one of the largest year-over-year reductions the state has seen, according to a report by nonprofit Next 10. The state’s use of cleaner fuels in heavy-duty transportation, like big rigs, and its deployment of battery storage and solar energy drove this climate progress, in large part.
The report found that fossil fuels supplied just 36.3% of the state’s electricity in 2024, an all-time low, and renewables surpassed 50% of the energy that powers California’s grid.
“California is doing extremely well in reducing our carbon emissions and moving towards a low-carbon economy,” said F. Noel Perry, founder of Next 10, a nonprofit that aims to educate the public and policymakers on economic, environmental, and quality of life issues.
While the transportation sector comprised the state’s largest category of emissions, accounting for roughly 38% of emissions in 2023, it also saw the largest percentage decrease in emissions of any other sector, falling by 4.6%. Heavy-duty trucks relied more on biofuels, which are made from plants or other organic materials instead of fossil fuels, which account for the majority of the drop.
There was a dip in pollution from cars, too, although it was far smaller.
Emissions fell in all other categories the researchers reviewed, with the exception of pollution from residential and commercial sectors, which grew by nearly 7%.
The large increase is from grocery stores, commercial and industrial cold storage facilities, and others, that have replaced gases in old refrigeration systems with ones that don’t harm the ozone layer, but can cause a lot of warming if they leak.
Researchers said that while the data is encouraging, California policymakers and regulators need to do more to hit the state’s 2030 goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40% below 1990 levels.
That would require an average annual emissions reduction rate of 4.4%, a number far higher than historic annual reductions. For the state to reach its even more ambitious 2045 emissions goal — of 85% below 1990 levels — California would have to double that reduction rate.
“This is an encouraging result, especially amid the current federal administration’s hostility toward clean energy and climate change and environmental policies,” said Hoyu Chong, lead researcher on Next 10’s report.
“California is still not quite on track to meet its 2030 goals, but I do think it’s getting closer to within striking distance,” Chong said. “I like to use the analogy of saving money. Even if a person might not reach their savings goal by their deadline, the fact that the person has saved something is still better than nothing, right?”
The report echoes an oft-touted phrase by Gov. Gavin Newsom: that California’s economy grows while the state reduces emissions.
Authors say further phasing out of fossil fuels and electrifying the grid will be crucial, as well as more cuts to emissions from transportation, buildings and industry.
Next 10 has tracked California’s progress toward its 2030 climate goals since the state adopted the targets in 2006.
