Wilshire Boulevard is one of Los Angeles County’s most congested streets, sometimes taking nearly half an hour to move half a mile along the road. The recent opening of the D Line extension— a project decades in the making —promises dramatically shorter commutes between downtown, Beverly Hills, and the Westside. The line is predicted to move traffic through the entire city in approximately twenty-five minutes, but it remains to be seen how often residents of Los Angeles will use it.
One deterrent to use, according to several residents, is safety. Residents shared incidents where they felt unsafe, such as men screaming at them and following them, and a study found that about half of the university students who used the Metro were sexually harassed. An article by The New Yorker quoted deputy director of the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies Madeline Brozen, who shared, “What we found is that frequency of how often a bus or train arrived is the No. 1 solution that helps people feel safer…Once riders are on the bus or train, they’re in the safest part of the system.” Metro has taken measures over the years to increase the safety of its services, including implementing the Ambassador program and stricter fare gates, but it will take some time for Los Angeles to shift its perspective on the Metro as well.
