The Brief

Metro's long-planned Sepulveda Corridor transit project is expected to bring some relief to beleaguered commuters in the San Fernando Valley and Westside, but local residents and the public are still hammering out what exactly that would look like.

That'll be the focus of a series of public feedback sessions, starting with one on Saturday morning in Van Nuys.

Metro's proposals for the corridor have already generated a fair amount of debate — and there are two main options. Supporters of building a subway crashed one of the last feedback sessions on Metro's monorail proposals, so we thought we'd break down the issue for you to understand what's at stake for the communities affected by the project.

At this stage, the sessions are aimed at getting feedback on alternatives to monorail, as well as the possible elimination of the monorail option with a people mover connection to UCLA, according to Metro.

Why the Sepulveda Pass?

If you've ever driven this span of the highway during rush hour, you can probably guess why the project's being built. The 405 Freeway is one of the busiest in the nation — though the 5 Freeway wins first place, according to U.S. Department of Transportation data.

What's more, the stretch of the 405 running through the Sepulveda Pass is consistently ranked as one of the slowest and most-trafficked freeways in the country — and so it's not hard to imagine why commuters would jump at the opportunity to ditch their car for a train commute.

"There's a concentration of housing in the valley and a concentration of jobs on the Westside and where I'm based at UCLA in particular," said Jacob Wasserman, a researcher at UCLA's Institute of Transportation Studies. "This line, according to the projections that Metro has run, has the potential to have tens of thousands of riders a day."

The proposals

Metro is studying the possible routes for the new line, as well as where to put new metro stations. Some of the proposals include new stations at UCLA, the Getty Center, and Ventura Boulevard — though not every plan includes stops at every location.

Metro had previously been considering building light rail along the 405 Freeway, similar to how the C Line runs along the median of the 105 Freeway. Light rail trains make up the majority of Los Angeles' Metro lines, with the exception of the B and D Lines, but they also tend to operate slower and have lower capacity than heavy rail. Wasserman said officials decided to nix that idea since it wouldn't be able to keep up with anticipated demand for the new line.

Note: Each of the proposals is called an "alternative" — as in, an alternative to taking the 405.

• Alternative 1: Above-ground monorail in the 405 corridor and electric bus connection to UCLA (LASRE)
• Alternative 2: Above-ground monorail in 405 corridor and underground automated people mover connection to UCLA (LASRE).
• Alternative 3: Above-ground monorail in the 405 corridor and underground alignment between Getty Center and Wilshire Bl (LASRE). This station would be the only monorail option to include a stop on UCLA's campus.
• Alternative 4: Heavy rail with underground alignment south of Ventura Bl and aerial alignment generally along Sepulveda Bl in the San Fernando Valley (STCP)
• Alternative 5: Heavy rail with underground alignment including along Sepulveda in the San Fernando Valley (STCP)
• Alternative 6: Heavy rail with underground alignment including along Van Nuys Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley and southern terminus station at Bundy Drive (Metro)

Alternative 2 — which involves the construction of both a monorail and a people mover to connect to UCLA — is the one that could be on the chopping block during the current round of public comment.

Notably, all of the proposed lines would connect the D Line expansion, which is slated to open in 2028, with Metro's E Line running from Santa Monica to East Los Angeles. They would also connect to Metro's G Line bus service, the Van Nuys Metrolink station, and the planned East San Fernando Valley Light Rail Transit Project.

Pros and cons

The project has brought out many stakeholders, and for many of them it's not as simple as building a monorail or a subway — though that's certainly something Metro will have to figure out by the end of the review process.

Wasserman identified some advantages for building a subway: increased capacity, shortened travel times, and interchangeability with other subway lines.

"The subway appears to, at least from the documents I've seen from Metro, have higher capacity, and this line will generate a ton of ridership," Wasserman said.

The subway would likely be able to travel through the Sepulveda Pass faster than a monorail — though eliminating a proposed stop at the Getty Center would cut down on travel times for the monorail. Metro projects the Getty Center stop would have about 1,300 weekday boardings, a fraction of the expected ridership at UCLA and connections to other rail and bus lines.

Building heavy rail would also open up an opportunity for Metro to use trains and even conductors from elsewhere in the system. Los Angeles already has two heavy rail lines: the B Line from Union Station to North Hollywood and the D Line from downtown to Koreatown (which will be expanded to Westwood by 2028).

The heavy rail lines would also be a guaranteed boon for people who attend or work at UCLA. All of the subway proposals would have a stop at UCLA, while only one of the proposed monorail routes, Alternative 3, would stop directly on campus.

"The UCLA community, from the administration itself to students, staff, faculty, in large part is supportive of options with a stop on campus," Wasserman said.

Much of the opposition to heavy rail has come from homeowners in Bel Air who oppose tunneling underneath their properties, according to Wasserman. Meanwhile, Sherman Oaks residents have voiced concerns about noise and impact on the streets.

However, Metro said in a statement provided to LAist that the agency is confident the tunneling will not pose issues for Bel Air residents.

"We have successfully tunneled under all types of private property -- and at shallower depths than what we would anticipate for any of the Sepulveda subway options now under study," Metro spokesperson Dave Sotero wrote in a statement provided to LAist. "To date, Metro has not had issues with noise, vibration, subsidence, or the ability of property owners to build above our existing subways in Los Angeles County."

Sotero pointed to recently completed tunneling projects in Los Angeles, including the expansion of the D Line into the Westside and the tunneling of Metro's Regional Connector project underneath Walt Disney Concert Hall.

"Metro is fully capable of conducting appropriate studies and design to ensure construction and operation of new transit projects can occur without issues," Sotero wrote.

The monorail would come with one big advantage: It would involve less — or potentially no — tunneling. That would likely lower Metro's construction costs and allow the project to get up and running sooner than the subway.

However, a potential disadvantage for the monorail is noise and air pollution, which has already proved to be a concern with the C Line along the 105 Freeway.

"If you commute on the [C] Line daily, you are prone to suffer permanent hearing damage because of the noise of cars that you have to deal with every day," Wasserman said. "A monorail might have the same thing, especially if there's a stop at the Getty Center or stops in the valley that are in the median of the 405."

Monorails are much less common in the U.S. than either light or heavy rail, but there are a few examples of cities that have operate them for public transportation: Seattle, Jacksonville, and the Las Vegas area all have installed urban monorail systems.

"Monorail is a relatively untested or at least underused technology compared to the subways, and so we don't quite know what changes might come up, whether the cost estimates are actually accurate to what's going to happen on the ground," Wasserman said.

Next steps

Metro is projecting that it will finish construction on the Sepulveda Corridor line between 2033 and 2035. Metro is still in the environmental review phase, meaning there will be more rounds of public comment to narrow down and refine the proposals — and Wasserman cautioned that the final project might look different from the proposal anyway.

"Things change in the construction process — you dig and you encounter a new sewer line that you didn't expect was there," Wasserman said. "Funding, obviously, could dry up or slow. And so the route that's selected and the design that's selected might not be exactly what's built, but it will look largely similar is my bet."

Metro is planning to release a draft environmental impact report, the next major step in the construction process, in early 2025.

Upcoming public comment sessions

• Saturday, May 11, 2024 – 10 a.m. to noon, Marvin Braude Center, 6262 Van Nuys Boulevard, Van Nuys, CA 91401. Transit: Metro Bus Lines 233 and 761 serve Van Nuys Boulevard; the Metro G Line (Orange) Busway Van Nuys Station is located three blocks to the south. Parking will be available under the building (entrance off Sylvan Street). 
• Virtual Meeting: Monday, May 13, 2024 – Noon to 1 p.m. Zoom Link: https://qrco.de/Sepulveda-May13. Call in: +1 669 900 6833. Webinar ID: 848 5610 6007.
• Tuesday, May 14 – 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., Westwood United Methodist Church, 10497 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90024. Transit: Metro Bus Lines 20 and 720 serve Wilshire Boulevard. Parking is available under the Belmont Village Senior Living Westwood, just east of the church. 
  

Metro is also soliciting feedback on proposals for East San Fernando Valley line. That session will take place at 12:30 p.m. at the Marvin Braude Center immediately following the feedback session for the Sepulveda Corridor.

A new law will require local agencies to publicly disclose audio recordings and written records of 911 calls originating from privately run immigration detention facilities. The bill was prompted by CalMatters reporting on alleged sexual assaults at the Otay Mesa Detention Center.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 423, called the Detention Facility Transparency Act, on Tuesday. It was one of 21 immigration-related bills in a package his office announced the same day.

The law will require local agencies to turn over recordings and written records of 911 calls from privately run detention facilities, if a member of the public requests them. It includes an exception if an active investigation is underway and requires redacting the names of affected individuals.

“Well, it goes without saying, these past two years, Donald Trump has brought fear and has brought anxiety, disruption and stress to our immigrant communities,” Newsom said in a recorded video statement on his website.

“So, today, I sign a number of bills to strengthen transparency and to strengthen accountability and oversight over federal immigration enforcement and civil detention in our state,” the governor said.

State Sen. Lena Gonzalez, a Democrat from Long Beach, introduced SB 423 as state investigations and courts found serious gaps in essential medical care within the facilities. She said the aim was to stop private operators, and the agencies that work alongside them, from keeping what happens behind detention walls from the public's view.

In February, L.A. Taco reported that detainees inside Otay Mesa were throwing lotion bottles wrapped with notes about conditions inside over the wall of the facility to organizers standing outside.

“For 280 days we haven’t eaten a single piece of fruit, banana, apple, orange, or anything fresh," an Otay Mesa detainee wrote, the news outlet reported. "We are all in one big room with no doors or windows. We can’t see any grass or trees. We are all constantly sick.”

Gonzalez, who is chair of the Legislative Latino Caucus, said no person “should have to resort to throwing notes over the walls of a detention facility to have their needs met and their voices heard.”

Earlier this year, CalMatters sought information, including 911 audio records and other reports, about alleged serious incidents at detention facilities through a California Public Records Act request. While a San Diego County sheriff’s spokesperson said the agency was not investigating those cases, he said he was unable to turn over additional records because they were part of “a law enforcement investigation.”

“When journalists and reporters attempted to obtain records about reported incidents at these facilities through the Public Records Act, they faced severe pushback from law enforcement, citing vague investigatory records exemptions, despite there being no active investigation,” said Gonzalez.

Immigrant Defense Advocates and the First Amendment Coalition co-sponsored the bill.

“The governor has sent a powerful message: No more secrecy. SB 423 makes clear that 911 calls and related records about events in detention must be released upon request. This will shed more light on a notoriously opaque system, leading to stronger oversight and accountability,” Ginny LaRoe, Advocacy Director, First Amendment Coalition, said in a written statement.

Gonzalez’s bill was one of several detention oversight bills Newsom signed Tuesday. Others impose a new 25% tax on private detention facilities, expand health, safety and oversight requirements for the centers, and add to the state attorney general’s oversight role.

The new laws take effect Jan. 1.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Six Flags Magic Mountain is retiring its famous X2 roller coaster amid lawsuits alleging serious brain injury caused by the ride.

The Southern California theme park said Tuesday that it is permanently shuttering the ride after nearly 20 years. Six Flags recently settled a wrongful-death lawsuit from the family of a 22-year-old man who died after riding the coaster in 2022, and three more lawsuits alleging traumatic brain injuries were filed last week.

“While X2 consistently passed a multitude of safety tests, we have decided to close the ride because we believe it’s the right thing to do,” park President Brian Oerding said in an online announcement. “Ride safety is a cornerstone of our business, and when we see guest confidence affected, we take it seriously.”

The ride has been closed since the evening of July 12, after two women who rode the coaster less than a week apart both needed to be rushed to the hospital after they exited.

One of them, 25-year-old Naomi Greer-Wilkinson, collapsed shortly after the ride ended and was found to have massive brain bleeding inside the skull that required emergency brain surgery. She remains in a vegetative state in the hospital, unable to speak or move and dependent on a ventilator. Her family filed a lawsuit against Six Flags on her behalf.

Her attorneys said more than 100 people claimed they suffered brain injuries from the roller coaster in the past two years, and more lawsuits would be filed in the coming weeks.

According to the Six Flags Magic Mountain website, the X2 roller coaster reaches a top speed of 76 mph (122 kph) and has a total length of 3,610 feet (1,100 meters). The seats rotate 360 degrees “so your body will be flipping around the entire time,” and the ride features two “raven turns” — half loops that turn into sheer drops midway.

It debuted at the park in 2002 under the name X as the world’s first “fourth-dimension” roller coaster and reopened in 2008 as X2 with new trains and special effects. The uniqueness of the ride drew thrill-seekers from around the world and garnered a fervent fanbase.

The park settled a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the family of Christopher Hawley, a 22-year-old who died the day after he rode X2. He was taken to the hospital after the ride with severe brain bleeding. The medical examiner’s office said his death was from blunt head trauma. The case was settled at the end of August, a few days before the trial was scheduled to start.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the administration to resume, for now, deportations of migrants to countries that are not identified in their removal orders, handing President Donald Trump another victory in his aggressive immigration agenda.

The court also said it would take up the case for full oral argument in December.

The court's brief order granting the petition did not outline a reason for staying a lower-court order that blocked the third-country deportations. It noted the court's three liberal justices objected to staying the order.

Solicitor General John Sauer told the justices the third-country deportation policy amounted to "an essential tool to remove certain aliens, including some of the worst criminal aliens" in court papers earlier this month. The administration said it has used the policy to deport tens of thousands of noncitizens to Mexico and countries in Africa and Latin America after the migrants' home countries refused to accept them.

"While certain aliens may benefit from stalling their removal, the Nation does not," Sauer wrote in an emergency application Sept. 24.

The action by the high court marks the third time the justices have rejected efforts by U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston to pause the deportations, which the judge said violate due process rights and fail to give detainees meaningful notice to raise arguments that they have credible fears of torture or abuse in the countries where they could be sent.

The National Immigration Litigation Alliance, which is representing migrants facing deportation, said in court papers that their clients are facing significant harms.

"The record shows that class members removed without meaningful notice or an opportunity to present country-specific protection claims have faced prolonged and arbitrary detention, beatings and sexual assault, disappearance, and chain refoulement to countries from which the United States had already granted them protection," wrote lawyer Trina Realmuto. "These harms cannot be undone."

The Department of Homeland Security said Murphy's rulings have created a logistical nightmare, including canceled flights, potential diplomatic clashes, and a lag in removing people convicted of assault and drug crimes.

The administration argued that if a country has assured Secretary of State Marco Rubio that it will not engage in persecution or torture, that should be enough to deport a noncitizen to a country that's not their own.

The Supreme Court's conservative supermajority has recognized the president has substantial authority over the border. Last summer, in a 6-to-3 decision, the court ruled President Trump has sweeping power to end the temporary protected status program for people who can't return to their home countries because of wars and natural disasters.

Copyright 2026 NPR

The bell had already rung on a recent morning at Newport Beach’s Ensign Intermediate School. But two of the school’s students hadn’t made it to class. Instead, they were sitting on a sidewalk across from campus, detained by a police officer for parking their e-bikes on the street.

The situation at Ensign has gotten messy since the school district, Newport-Mesa Unified, voted to ban e-bikes from middle and elementary school campuses, citing safety concerns. Many students kept riding their e-bikes to school anyway, parking them in swarms in the surrounding neighborhood.

The neighbors did not like this. Shouting matches ensued between students and homeowners. At least one student returned from class to find her tires deflated.

The city responded to the tension by putting up “No e-bike parking” signs on several streets.

The city of Newport Beach prohibited e-bikes on some streets around Ensign Intermediate School after neighbors complained.

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“I wouldn't want it in my neighborhood either, like, I get it,” said Corey Gulbranson, who got a $100 parking ticket on behalf of his daughter, one of the Ensign students detained for allegedly illegally parking her e-bike. “But at the end of the day, we're just trying to get our kids to school on a legal mode of transportation.”

Crucial teen commuting tools? Or dangerous devices?

E-bikes and significantly more powerful e-motorcycles have become very popular in many Orange County suburbs, where the streets are wide, public transit is spotty, and distances are longer than some are willing to pedal on a regular bike. For teens and tweens, e-bikes provide a taste of independence. They also relieve parents of some of their driving duties. Plus, e-bikes can replace polluting cars.

But their popularity has brought an alarming increase in serious injuries, especially among young riders.

At Providence Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, e-bike crashes are now sending more kids to the ER than any other cause, according to Dr. Tetsuya Takeuchi, the hospital’s trauma medical director. More than 70% of those patients had some level of head injury, from minor concussions to devastating brain damage, he said, often because they were not wearing a helmet.

But even Takeuchi recognizes the nearly irresistible draw of e-bikes.

“If you ride one, you realize how easy it is to go everywhere with it,” he said.  “I am not by any means surprised at how popular this is, especially amongst kids.”

‘Bicycle-shaped devices’

Not all e-bikes are equally fast, or equally dangerous. California uses a three-tier system, developed by the bike industry, to classify e-bikes depending on:

• engine power
• max speed
• whether the bike has pedals 
• whether a cyclist has to use those pedals before the engine kicks in 

California law prohibits children under age 16 from riding Class 3 e-bikes with engines capable of reaching 28 miles per hour. In reality, though, many kids are riding e-vehicles that go faster — in some cases, much faster.

“There are lots of what I will call 'bicycle-shaped devices' being ridden,” said Asha Weinstein Agrawal, a research associate at the Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University. “Some of them are legal e-bikes. Some of them are not.”

Agrawal recently co-authored a 210-page report on e-bike safety. It includes data collected from middle and high schools in Marin and San Mateo counties, which showed that only 12% of students’ e-bikes fit into the legal classification system. The other 88% were more powerful than legally allowed under California law.

A Newport Beach Police officer tickets a middle schooler for parking her e-bike on the street across from Ensign Middle School on Sept. 4, 2026.

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Any bicycle-shaped device that goes faster than 30 miles per hour is technically an e-motorcycle, which requires a special driver’s license and, if ridden on public roads, insurance and registration.

Agrawal said it’s hard for parents, and even police officers, to figure out what’s legal and what’s not.

“Nobody understands this,” she said. “It’s very hard to enforce.”

The crackdown

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer has taken some unusual approaches to addressing the e-bike dilemma. To date, he has pressed criminal charges — including for child endangerment — against four parents after their children were involved in collisions, all of them on e-motorcycles, not e-bikes.

One of those parents, a woman from Aliso Viejo, was charged with three felonies, including involuntary manslaughter, after her 14-year-old son allegedly struck and killed an 81-year-old man while doing wheelies in the street in Lake Forest on an e-motorcycle souped up to reach 60 miles per hour.

People with e-bikes, e-scooters and e-motos move through the long line at the Orange County District Attorney's buyback event at Angel Stadium, Sept. 13, 2026.

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The DA’s office said it has also sent letters to retailers reminding them of a ban on selling products used to modify e-bikes to go faster than legally allowed.

Spitzer recently tried another novel approach: buybacks. On a recent Sunday, hundreds of people brought their e-bikes, e-scooters and e-motos to an event at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, hoping to turn them in for up to a thousand dollars in gift cards. The county event was paid for with $100,000 in asset forfeiture funds.

One man near the front of the line said he had arrived at 1 a.m. By the time the event started at 10 a.m., sheriff’s deputies were turning people away.

“Holy smokes,” Spitzer said from behind a podium mounted in the parking lot. “Look at the participation. … And you can see why, because we have a serious problem here in Orange County and across the nation with individuals who have e-bikes and e-motorcycles.”

Spitzer spoke about the dangers, but also the attractiveness of a high-powered personal vehicle, especially for teen boys.

 “We're not gonna change our internal DNA about who we are as young people and the fact we wanna go places, and we wanna experiment, and quite frankly, we like fast things,” he said. “ But the fact of the matter is when you have a machine, and you don't understand its capabilities, you can find yourself in harm's way very quickly before you can control that mechanism.”

Orange County District Attorney is testing out a range of strategies to crack down on illegal e-bikes and e-motos, including a buyback event at Angel Stadium on Sept. 13, 2026.

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Are unsafe riders ‘ruining it for other people’?

Paul Dumont drove to the buyback event all the way from Chatsworth in hopes of exchanging five e-bikes he had bought for his kids and grandkids.

“They got injured on them when we first got them, so they've been sitting in storage,” he said of the bikes.

Dumont said he wished he had bought less powerful e-bikes. “But I bought them the best ones,” he said. “I thought they'd be better.”

Denise Mills and her 17-year-old son Nathanael came from Torrance to turn in three e-motorcycles that he had been riding to and from his high school last year. He stopped after the school told him it was illegal. A new state law defining e-motorcycles took effect in January.

A student at Ensign Middle School runs to campus after parking his e-bike at a nearby park, Sept. 4, 2026.

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“That was very unfortunate because it's his primary source of transportation,” Mills said. “Now it's his dad and I.”

Nathanael said he had logged several thousand miles without an accident.

“ Partially it's, like, people ruining it for other people,” he said of efforts to tighten the rules for young riders.

Local leaders grapple with the flood of e-bikes

Cities and school districts are testing a variety of approaches to decrease e-bike crashes and injuries, from prohibiting riding on sidewalks to outright bans for young riders. The Brea City Council has even discussed using police drones to follow unsafe youth riders home in order to inform their parents.

In a more typical approach, the Huntington Beach City School District requires all student e-bike commuters to pass a safety course in order to get a permit to park their bike on campus. Newport-Mesa has a similar program for high schoolers.

Marin County limits youth under age 16 to riding Class 1 “pedal-assist” e-bikes, which have motors that kick in only while pedaling, and shut off once the bike reaches 20 miles per hour. The ban on more powerful e-bikes for young riders is part of a pilot program approved by the state legislature that sunsets in 2029.

At the federal level, O.C. Congressman Dave Min, D-Irvine, co-authored a bill earlier this year, the Safe SPEEDS Act, that would develop nationwide safety standards for e-bikes, including minimum age recommendations.

A dilemma for parents

Parents of student e-bike commuters have said they do not oppose regulating the vehicles, and they want authorities to crack down on dangerous and illegal riding. But an outright ban goes too far, they’ve said.

“ I know there are kids that are a little wild,” said Kellie Newcombe, whose 13-year-old daughter is still riding her pedal-assist bike from their home in Costa Mesa to Ensign Intermediate School in Newport Beach.

“That is not my child. That is not her friends. They are so ridiculously safe and by the book,” she said. “It's just super frustrating that they would say every kid cannot ride an e-bike.”

A spokesperson for Newport-Mesa Unified told LAist in an email that the school district’s new e-bike restrictions have gone smoothly and are helping to reinforce safety. But that is not how Gulbranson and Newcombe see it.

“We've had my daughter intimidated by multiple neighbors now,” Gulbranson said. “This whole guise of doing it under safety is totally misguided.”

Newcombe said she worries about her daughter’s safety more now that an increasing number of parents are driving their kids to school.

“They're in a rush because the traffic is insane,” she said. Plus, her daughter now has to cross a busy street to get to campus.

Newcombe said she wishes the school district would work with local leaders and police to enforce e-bike rules and to create safer paths to school for responsible riders.