WeHo rail extension route approved (mostly) with assurances there won’t be any delays

The Los Angeles Metro Board approved on Thursday the agency staff-recommended route of the K Line Northern extension with an amendment.

The amendment calls for additional study of tunneling under Mid-City to inform what that section of the train ends up looking like.

The amendment was billed as a compromise in a political push-and-pull that continued into early Thursday morning between unabashed supporters of the route, including the city of West Hollywood, L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who has tried to appease persistent concerns over the project's impact on residents of the Lafayette Square neighborhood.

“ I am very optimistic, and I'm very pleased that we got to an agreement so that we can all move together jointly,” West Hollywood Mayor John Heilman said to LAist in an interview before the vote.

Metro staff, Horvath and Bass assured the public Thursday that the approved amendment won’t delay the project, including the city of West Hollywood and L.A. County’s joint plan to potentially front billions of dollars to kickstart the project without raising taxes.

“[The amendment] explicitly ensures that continued study, engagement and refinement in the Mid-City segment will proceed without scheduling, cost or job impacts,” Bass said about the amendment during the meeting.

The amendment was unanimously approved in an 11-0 vote. Metro Board Directors Jacquelyn Dupont-Walker and Holly Mitchell recused themselves since they own property in proximity to the proposed extension.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath has championed the K Line Northern Extension.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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The low-down on the extension

The K Line currently runs from Redondo Beach to Crenshaw and stops at the LAX/Metro Transit Center. Earlier in March, Metro officials recommended a nearly 10-mile route for the train to continue north through Mid City and West Hollywood and terminate at the Hollywood Bowl.

The route would connect to the D Line in Wilshire and the B Line in Hollywood, closing a north-south gap that currently exists in Metro’s rail network. The extension would link to cultural hubs, including the Museum District and Hollywood Bowl, major employers such as Cedars Sinai Medical Center and queer nightlife along Santa Monica and Sunset boulevards.

According to Metro staff estimates, the route that was mostly approved today would serve the highest number of riders and reach the most residents and jobs compared to other alternatives studied.

You can read more about the specifics and the lead up to Thursday’s vote in our earlier coverage.

Didn’t Metro already study tunneling in Mid-City?

Lafayette Square residents have for years expressed fears over the effects of tunneling on property values, noise and vibration.

Based on the concerns, the Metro Board directed agency staff in October 2024 to do further analysis and community outreach. That work, which cost an additional $2.3 million, involved studying 12 different route options through Mid-City and concluded that tunneling will be deep enough to zero out any surface-level disruptions.

It’s unclear what the study prescribed by the amendment approved Thursday will materialize that hasn’t already been addressed.

Once fully built out, the K Line will run from the South Bay to Hollywood.

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L.A. Metro

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What happens now?

Thursday’s affirmative vote was necessary before the city of West Hollywood and L.A. County pursue a plan to capture a certain proportion of future property tax growth in a defined area near the project and funnel it towards construction. Critically, this plan wouldn’t involve raising taxes.

“Every time a property is redeveloped or sold, it adds to that increment, which adds to the amount of money that you can raise,” Eli Lipmen, head of transit advocacy group Move LA and supporter of the Metro-recommended route for the extension, said to LAist last week.

Now that the board green-lit the route, West Hollywood City Council and the L.A. County Board of Supervisors will pursue creating the district within which property tax growth could be captured.

The completion of that legislative work will trigger a 12- month clock to conduct the additional Mid-City tunneling study and finalize the route there.

It’s all about compromise

A draft version of the amendment that circulated earlier this week did not include the 12-month time cap on the additional analysis, which raised a red flag for the city of West Hollywood.

“If additional outreach and technical work must be done … it should be capped at a reasonable maximum duration to prevent further delays,” Heilman and City Councilmember Chelsea Byers wrote in a Wednesday letter to the Board.

Heilman said he worked through Wednesday night and into Thursday morning with Horvath and Metro and Bass’ staff toward the amendment that the Board approved.

Today’s vote isn’t final project approval, and it will return back to the Metro Board several more times before shovels hit the ground.

The projected cost of the train is fluid until the Mid-City section is finalized. However, earlier estimates had the staff-recommended route for the train extension coming in at around $15 billion. Measure M, the half-cent sales tax county voters approved a decade ago, includes more than $2 billion for the project.

Those funds won’t be available until the 2040s, but the financing plan that West Hollywood and the county are pursuing could expedite the release of that money and construction.

The current Metro K Line train opened to the public on October 7, 2022.

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Raquel Natalicchio

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K Line Northern Extension elicited historic feedback from community

Public officials said the K Line Northern extension was an extraordinary display of community passion and pressure.

Inglewood Mayor James Butts, who sits on the Metro Board and was listed as a co-author on the draft amendment, said he received “767 emails from West Hollywood.”

“I applaud you,” Butts said during the meeting. “You guys are the strongest advocacy group I’ve seen in 54 years of municipal service.”