Work is set to begin as early as March 2025 for near-term improvements that will set the stage for a bus rapid transit line down Vermont Avenue, Metro announced this week.

The Vermont Transit Corridor, which runs roughly 12 miles of Vermont Avenue between Hollywood Boulevard in Los Feliz and 120th Street in unincorporated Athens, sees approximately 36,000 transit trips on a daily basis. That makes it the busiest bus route in Metro's network.

Rendering of Vermont BRT segment from 4th Street to 1st Street looking northMetro

Plans to upgrade the corridor with bus rapid transit infrastructure date to 2016, when Los Angeles County voters approved funding for the project via the Measure M sales tax. The final design for the project, which has been labeled "underwhelming," calls for eventually implementing end-to-end side running bus lanes along the full corridor for use by Metro and local bus lines.

However, that plan remains several years away from fruition. In the meantime, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation will start early work on the project by converting peak-hour tow-away lanes on Vermont between Sunset and Wilshire Boulevards into bus priority lanes. That process is slated to take approximately six months to complete.

Northern bus lane segmentMetro

Construction will occur on weekdays from 9 am to 3 pm and 7 pm to 7 am, then on Saturdays from 8 am to 6 pm. The new bus lanes will also extend or change the hours of parking restrictions on Vermont as follows:

  • The existing 4:00 – 7:00 PM weekday parking restrictions on Vermont Avenue (between Sunset and Wilshire) will shift to 3:00 – 7:00 PM.
  • Areas currently restricted from 7:00 – 9:00 AM on weekdays will be extended to 7:00 – 10:00 AM.
  • Locations without existing morning restrictions will have new 7:00 – 10:00 AM weekday parking limits.

Separately, additional peak-hour bus lanes will be implemented on the stretch of Vermont between Gage Street in South Los Angeles and the Vermont/Athens C Line Station within the median of the I-105 Freeway. The full BRT project would connect those two segments by 2028 in advance of the Olympics.

Southern bus lane segmentMetro

Metro expects the dedicated lanes will increase ridership on Vermont to 66,000 daily passengers, more than 12,000 of whom would be new daily riders to Metro's system. Additionally, the project would cut bus travel times from 70 minutes to 53 minutes.

Those high ridership numbers might suggest rail instead of bus. Metro has also looked to the horizon with plans for a subway or light rail line on the corridor, carrying as many as 144,000 daily passengers. However, funding for such an undertaking would not be available until 2067.

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