The West’s busiest terminal, a Metro at six-year highs, and the D Line extension that changed the map before the world arrived.
Los Angeles Union Station is the last great American rail terminal still growing — and the Metro beneath it is having its best year since before the pandemic.
Union Station anchors Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner (its busiest corridor outside the Northeast), Metrolink commuter rail across five counties, and two Metro rail lines — the western terminus of American intercity rail.
LA Metro logged roughly 27 million boardings in May 2026, the highest monthly total in six years, with rail ridership up 9.5% year on year.
The D Line (Purple) extension’s first phase drove the surge — ridership on the corridor jumped 62% after opening — with further phases to Beverly Hills, Century City and Westwood arriving through the events decade.
For the 2026 World Cup, Metro projects about 45,000 additional rides per match and ran enhanced shuttle service to SoFi Stadium; the K Line and C Line give the airport its first rail-adjacent connection via the People Mover.
The long game: the Regional Connector already stitches the light-rail network into a single grid, and the Sepulveda corridor is the next billion-dollar question.
Los Angeles is relearning how to be a rail city one opening at a time. The ridership numbers are still a fraction of Asia’s megahubs, but the direction is unmistakable: every new segment outperforms the models, because the models assume a car city and the passengers have already decided otherwise. Union Station’s second century will be busier than its first.
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