New Purple Line Metro Opens in Los Angeles

Los Angeles finally pushed the Purple Line — now officially the D Line — farther west. On May 8, Metro opened the first phase of its long-delayed subway extension, adding three underground stations along Wilshire Boulevard and bringing rail service deeper into Mid-Wilshire and up to the edge of Beverly Hills. That matters because Wilshire is one of the city’s busiest east-west corridors, and for years the subway just stopped short. Now it doesn’t. ### What opened, exactly? Section 1 is a 3.9-mile extension from the old western end of the line at Wilshire/Western to three new stations: Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax, and Wilshire/La Cienega. Metro says regular service began Friday, May 8, 2026. The line stays fully underground, which is the whole point here — no fighting street traffic, no getting stuck behind cars, just a straight shot under one of L.A.’s most clogged boulevards. (metro.net) ### Why is Wilshire such a big deal? Wilshire Boulevard is basically the spine of central Los Angeles. It cuts through Koreatown, Mid-Wilshire, the Miracle Mile, Beverly Hills, Century City, and eventually Westwood. A lot of jobs, museums, apartments, and bus riders already sit on that corridor. The gap was obvious: Metro had a subway pointing west, but not far enough west to reach many of the places people actually wanted to go. (metro.net) This opening starts to fix that missing link. ### Why did this take so long? Because tunneling a subway under dense Los Angeles neighborhoods is the hard version of transit building. You are digging below major streets, utilities, businesses, and old infrastructure, then adding deep stations with elevators, escalators, plazas, and safety systems. Metro has treated the D Line extension as one of its highest-priority projects for years, but the full buildout was always planned in stages rather than one giant opening day. (metro.net) ### Who benefits first? Riders headed between Downtown L.A., Koreatown, and the Mid-Wilshire/Miracle Mile area get the immediate win. The Fairfax stop improves access to Museum Row. La Cienega pushes rail service into Beverly Hills’ orbit, even before the line reaches the city’s downtown core. Metro also built the stations with ADA access, bike parking, bus connections, and public art, which sounds cosmetic until you remember these stations are supposed to function as real neighborhood anchors, not just holes in the ground. (metro.net) ### Is this the full Westside subway? No — and that is the key thing to understand. This is only Section 1. Section 2 is supposed to continue to downtown Beverly Hills and Century City. Section 3 is supposed to reach Westwood Village and the VA campus, which is the part that would finally put UCLA on the subway map. Metro’s current public timeline says Sections 2 and 3 are forecast to open in 2027. (metro.net) ### Why open this now? Timing matters. Metro has tied the project to its broader push to expand transit before major global events hit Los Angeles, especially the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics. So this is not just a neighborhood transit upgrade. It is part of a bigger deadline-driven buildout — the city trying to prove it can move huge numbers of people without asking everyone to drive. (thesource.metro.net) ### So what changes for L.A.? The biggest change is psychological as much as practical. For decades, a Westside subway in Los Angeles felt like a promise that kept slipping forward. Now riders can actually use a piece of it. The catch is that the most politically and economically important destinations — Century City, Westwood, UCLA — still sit one phase away. But the line is no longer hypothetical. It is running. (metro.net) ### Bottom line? This opening does not finish the job. But it turns the D Line extension from a construction story into a real transit service — and in Los Angeles, that is a bigger shift than it sounds. (metro.net)