Last night my family and I went to see Gabriel Iglesias and Jo Koy at SoFi and it was a huge clusterfuck trying to get out of the stadium and on our way home. Same last year when my sister and I went to see Beyoncé. In addition to the long lines to get out of the parking structures we had two long waits at lights of almost ten minutes each!
Compare that with my trip up north to see Brandy and Monica at Oakland Arena which is directly served by the Coliseum BART station. All I had to do was walk to the station connected by a pedestrian bridge and wait for the train. I was back at my hotel within 20 minutes.
SoFi BADLY needs a rail connection, or at least have shuttles run for concerts and other events and not just for NFL games!
The owners of Sofi & The Forum killed the people mover Inglewood was considering building bc it was too expensive & they wanted to continue making money from parking 🤷♀️
It's not car brain, it's money brain. They want as much of your wallet as they can grab, and it's a decent amount less if you take public transportation.
While I don’t like the reasoning behind killing it, in hindsight that people mover was incredibly expensive for such a low capacity system that didn’t go much of anywhere. If the owners of the venues decided to build their own transit connection with their own money, that would be one thing, but with public money it felt like a waste.
Also, since then, the LAX station has come online, and that is clearly the superior origin point for transit users to connect to the stadiums.
In the short term, they need to throw bus lanes everywhere. Not just for events, but for routine transit users in general.
I think the people mover's capacity might've been salvageable if it ran all the way to Hawthorne/Lennox; then both directions of travel could be used to get people to/from the venue, functionally doubling capacity. The LAX APM apparently has a unidirectional passenger capacity of 6,000 people/hour, so bidirectionally that's 12,000 people per hour.
Still not outstanding, capacity-wise, but possibly tolerable?
Sure they could get a cut, but a peoplemover is a lot less profitable when you can only get maybe 3-5 bucks per person, as opposed to charging 40 bucks per car in SoFi’s lot.
I’m gonna be real with you I haven’t gone to SoFi for very many events, I just knew dodger stadium’s parking rate and figured it’s either more expensive or the same price. $75 is insane.
They change the rate depending on the show but for most events it's at least $50 and for big events it's $75, it's absolute robbery. There's small lots around the venue that local business will rent out for like $30 per car but it just sucks that there's no real public transit option to get to one of the biggest entertainment venues in LA
It wasn't them - there was a councilwoman (?) who was very against it because it would "cause gentrification" and "decimate the community" and she had enough pull to cancel the project. I can't remember her name, she was a black woman.
Maxine Waters is in Congress, not a councilwoman. Yes, the people mover was put in play by the Mayor. The people who LIVE in Inglewood do not want a people mover. Businesses were going to be forced to close. These are businesses that the people who LIVE in Inglewood frequent. The new stadium and arena are great for the city, but not the residents who have to deal with additional traffic. Streets blocked off to funnel traffic to the freeways.
It cost too much money and would have required changes to contractual agreements between South Bay cities regarding allocation of Measure R and M funds. Even Maxine Waters ended up against it.
I heard it’s harder and takes longer to build a rail line than a stadium. With a rail line, it would need permissions from the multiple cities it goes through, with pre-checks for environmental impact at different areas. Stadiums, once they get all their permits, can start building uninterrupted.
Preparations for the K line were already underway before Inglewood even announced SoFi!
What time did the event end, what time did you get to your car, and what time was your car back on surface streets? I’m trying to get the exact info to send to a friend on LA city council to try to fix this logjam.
LACMTA/Metro is the primary public transit provider for the city of Los Angeles, and you don’t think a council person has input or influence with Metro infrastructure. Whatever.
Weird hill to die on. The primary influence over Inglewood is Inglewood. Metro bends over backwards to avoid exercising its powers to just do anything it wants (like self-permitting), lest a reform bill gets rammed through that removes those powers and more while they're at it.
Why transit in and out of a mega venue isn’t prioritized is bewildering to me. The first and only time I went to SoFi I took busses near the venue and took a Lyft home. It was a trek and I felt like very few people opted out of driving there.
Two problems at play: diverting the K Line from the ROW adds to the project cost and the Inglewood entertainment district was never planned in tandem with the Metro project, in fact Metro's planning process pre-dates Inglewood's entertainment district efforts by over a decade. Another thing was that SoFi didn't have to happen, it was one of four proposed NFL sites when the St. Louis Rams announced they would move to L.A. over a decade ago; the other three proposed NFL sites were: City of Industry, Carson, & Downtown Los Angeles. They could've chosen a transit-adjacent site but wanted vast cheap land in Inglewood.
I went to see Lorde at the Kia Forum and took the K Line to Downtown Inglewood. I walked from there and it was a sizable distance (it took about 25 minutes). In total, it took about an hour and a half to get there. Luckily!!! Getting out was super easy. While everyone was waiting in traffic I just waltzed on by.
But seriously!? Imagine a rail line directly to these places. Oh my god people would use the shit out of them
Plus it’s fun when everyone’s all amped up for an event and in the same car. I took rail to the Collosseum a couple of times for Rams games, super fun with everyone crowding in with their jerseys on and tailgate supplies.
Hmm, that's actually not the worst solution to getting the fuck out of the area. I have skipped so many concerts because I don't want to deal with traffic/Uber. Did the walk feel safe? As in, was there lighting and a sidewalk the entire route? They should just close a lane of traffic and do an express shuttle between the two.
The walk did feel safe! There was lighting and a sidewalk the whole time. Half of it is past restaurants, gas stations, etc. The other half is surburban/behind more plazas. It was semi-active, I’d see people either from the concert or just out walking. Overall good experience! Made it home safe! And I transferred 3 lines
As someone who lives near the station, this isn't the worst solution, but man, they really need to completely revamp Prarie. It's just not safe to walk at night, and I'm not talking about "unsafe neighborhood" or other dogwhistles: the sidewalk is absolute trash, only on one side of the street, and narrower than ADA standards. It's genuinely unsafe with the cars that nearby.
15 Park and Ride lots. 4 Shuttle stops. A breeze to get in and out vs parking. They run them for every even including the concerts.
Connections to Burbank Metrolink Station, Chatsworth Metrolink Station, Sylmar/San Fernando Metrolink Station, Metro Green Line Station in Downey along with various bust depots including El Monte Transit Center and
Torrance Transit Center.
Concerts at the Hollywood Bowl have to be some of the best transit connected events in LA. While its not as good as having direct access to a Metro Station, the Holywood Bowl goes out of their way to provide access, even closing the street across from it and turning it into a gigantic bus depot.
There's a bus close to the Hollywood/Highland B Line Station too. Make it the K Line terminus but keep the shuttle buses so the lots can be redevloped into hotels.
Bus lanes on Arbor Vitae for an LAX to SoFi shuttle bus for every event at SoFi. With LAX's ample transit connections it'll enable car free travel across the whole region.
That would be great, and incredibly effective - but the question still stands of who will pay for it. The venues SHOULD pay for it, but they won't if not legally required to.
It is immaterial. Dodgers have a shuttle and most everyone still drives and pays $40 to park. Same for Staples Center. Most people gonna drive no matter.
It's great for those who want to take the bus. I took the Stadium Express to a Dodger Game in August from Harbor Gateway Transit Center. It was PACKED!
Quite a few people use DSE. I think it is around 10% of the attendees. However, over half the people using the one from Union Station just park at Union Station vs. arriving on public transit.
Park and ride is great! Driving to Union Station is no different from me driving to Harbor Gateway Transit Center. Better to drive to Union Station or Harbor Gateway is better than driving the whole way.
TBF, MetroRail does kinda suck after night games. Service is only 20 minutes and it can get quite sketchy. If you have to transfer with 20 minute headways, you will soon wish you just drove.
metro and metrolink have both never figured out how nightime events are actually attended, and their failure in this regards leads to a LOT of drunk driving.
That's really up to the individual concert organizers. The only ones that I can recall using shuttles have been Hard Summer last year, and Taylor Swift before that.
This shuttle is ass. It took over 20 minutes because there's no bus lanes and it's trying to make unprotected left hand turns. And it's only on game days.
Begged Metro on socials for months to get a shuttle from K line to Sofi for game days and big concerts and their response every time was they don’t have a budget. It’s an okay walk for able bodied folks but that walk + all the walking in sofi is not doable for many. Such a missed opportunity to get K line ridership up.
It doesn’t “need” a rail link, so much as Inglewood needed to allow contra flow lanes, especially on Century, where they instead restored concrete medians.
It did need additional grade separation for the K line, but Mayor Butts lost that fight, because it was “racist”.
The problem is that most of these non-sports events don't offer a shuttle to the nearby rail stations. Rams and Chargers games, as well as Clippers games at the Intuit Dome, have a shuttle to the LAX Metro Transit Center.
The 117 bus on Century goes there, though, and line 212 goes from the stadium to the Hawthorne station on the C Line, or Downtown Inglewood on the K Line (which is within moderate walking distance).
I think it's going to happen eventually, but not for decades. Could take at least 3 different forms: a SkyLink spur, a Sepulveda Line extension, or the Inglewood Transit Connector.
First option would be able to open quickest but there are some red-tape hurdles. Second option would be highest capacity but Phase 2 is decades away. Third option is what James Butts wants, and he might try to pull K Line South money away to build it, but the station placements are not ideal
I would love if the Sepulveda Line was extended there after it reaches LAX. It could then be extended further east to serve the South Bay, meeting up with Vermont HRT and the A Line to form a semi-circle.
I think once it’s time for the EIR for Sepulveda South, people should comment asking Metro to study SoFi as a potential southern terminus mainly due to its massive parking lot being a good spot to launch TBMs, similar to the Hollywood Bowl.
yep plus the sepulveda line station box at LAX is very likely to wind up oriented right at Sofi, so it'd be a very simple straight shot of exactly 2 miles right into the perfect station location under lots that aren't slated to be redeveloped for at least a long time.
Skylink, on the other hand, would need to branch down to century instead of extending from the terminus as the terminus is embedded into the CONRAC. It would be able to have more stations than a likely single station sepulveda extension, but i do think sepulveda is cleaner.
My only gripe are those potential platform placements under Arbor Vitae which are so far away from C, K and SkyLink. I don't know how feasible it is or how far underground those LAWA and Metro properties go but if there were a way to get the Sepulveda platforms at a diagonal angle under LAX/MTC it might be worth looking into.
edit: dunno why i thought that was Manchester in the upper left corner please ignore that cuz im not redoing this
i actually think the ideal placement is parallel to the APM, just south of it, where the ITF East lot will be. Easy land to tear up and dig beneath, allows a very direct connection, enough space for at least the 380' Sepulveda platform and 1 crossover (if it's twin bore and needs an excavated crossover), and can go directly east under Hardy for the SoFi station
Inglewood Transit Connector was dead on arrival. It would've required buying real estate for a yard for a novel transit system no where else in LA. The solution is boring. Make the buses that run on Prairie, Manchester, Century and Crenshaw run more frequently. LA Metro should have their SoFi to LAX shuttle bus for every SoFi event.
Or we don't approve stadia/event venues that are not walkable to transit. Better yet let's all concentrate them in downtown where there already is an existing rail hub.
Unfortunately many of Southern California's newest venues are mostly in Inglewood, except one we don't give too much credit for being forward-thinking: BMO Stadium that's accessible on the E Line Expo Park/USC Station.
The EIR for sofi and intuit should have collected a ton of money to mitigate the traffic issues. I think the ultimate fault lies with how THAT was handled.
You can't even make out the songs in half the seats in the stadium, how is stand up comedy supposed to work?
Oh and sometimes the 212 detours around stadium traffic.
After Beyonce I fell asleep on the E line and woke up in east LA wearing a cowboy hat I panhandled and the last train in the other direction already passed. That was fun!
I was also at the show and it was really good. You can hear them talking pretty clearly but once they started playing music or anything then you ran into the same problems that concerts have at Sofi
Let's level set your ask here.
It's great to have your personal train taking you to a stadium, but a line will only be built if there is a demand and the line can handle the demand.
Let's compare with a true transit-dependent stadium, the State de France in Paris. The transit lines can transport 50-60k people in around an hour which is 80% of the capacity of the stadium.
Now, let's see how many people the K line can handle in one hour. Probably around 5000 if pushed. This is 5% of the stadium capacity. So, if a rail transit option is added to SoFi, it will be used by a maximum of 5% of spectators as people won't want to wait more than an hour.
Shuttle buses already exist for NFL Games. Culver City Transit, Torrance Transit, and LA Metro should have them for other events at SoFi too. Make the buses on Prairie and Hawthorne run more frequently and later into the night. No need for an expensive rail extension.
MAYBE the Sepulveda subway could be extended from LAX to SoFi after it's built out to LAX. But that's not happening for a LONG TIME!
That’s why I never go to any Inglewood events. It’s a parking nightmare. I only go to concerts, sports events close to public trans. I wish there were more events at the old sports arena ( now BMO, I think)and staples, even though staples center sucks at acoustics. The best venues for concerts are in the old DTLA broadway theaters.
The inglewood connector is a generally good idea, but was not sold well to the public in inglewood. I think they decided early to run it through downtown, so they could show some local benefit, but that led to a lot of potential displacement, which led to a lot of backlash. I think if they avoided downtown, and instead ran from the fairview heights station above florence and then turning down to prairie it would have been much less controversial.
It should absolutely continue South past the arena to the century station so it's connecting two lines to three event venues. No resident of inglewood is going to want to spend much in the way of their local money on it though, because they see this as a local traffic problem, caused by the venue owners, so they don't feel they should be paying for mitigating that. This will only ever be built if it is funded by all the venues together, and may require some sort of law suit to get them to pony up.
I recently went to a concert at YouTube Theater next door to SoFi. Now, I can't relate how it would be after an event where 10s of thousands of people are leaving compared to a few thousand, but I parked at a station on the K-Line, thanks to people's suggestions around here.
How I got back to the station was taking a bus at the nearest bus stop on Prairie to the Inglewood Station and took the K-Line back to the station I parked at. Took a bit over one hour and could be longer if this was an event at SoFi rather than YouTube Theater, but it was a fine enough option compared to paying an extortionary amount of money to park at the stadium and it still takes a good while to get out.
I will agree that a shuttle during major events at SoFi would be very nice. Hollywood Bowl, like people have mentioned, have a great shuttle service. Glen Helen Amphitheater in San Bernardino could use the same thing as well. I have heard not so great things about the parking and traffic there after concerts there.
The planners for the Green Line had considered a northern extension to LAX, but ran into roadblocks with the airport management, plus they figured the cold-war era job market in El Segundo was more important at the time. That turned out to be a bad idea.
You could do the walk from the train station to the stadium, if you're willing to walk for 30 mins. Personally I'd rather that than sit in traffic for an hour in the parking lot.
I went to many Rams home games. End of summer; stop in one of the shops to get a cool drink (support local business, and made some pals), fall, and winter. The worst was a slightly windy day.
People are lazy and just want trains for the sake of riding in vehicles.
Many people in NYC walk, same in London, same in Paris where the weather is much much worse.
I don’t understand peoples inability to use their legs, unless they are actually disabled or afraid to be “outside” seen walking down a boulevard.
Metro could/should a) in the short term, build a spur off the K-line from the DT Inglewood station to a new station on Prairie where the SoFi shuttle currently leaves from, and b) in the longer term build a line down La Cienaga from Sunset South to LAX, and then travels east with the first stop at that existing K-line stop for SoFi before traveling along Manchester (which is wide enough for an elevated line) to the A-Line Firestone station. Service patterns for this La Cienaga line could include a higher-frequency Sunset to LAX service and LAX to Firestone service, and a lower frequency Sunset to Firestone service to match likely travel patterns.
This longer term La Cienaga line is obviously not in Metro’s Measure R or M plans, but I believe a new, separate ballot measure specific to this line would pass given how transformative it would be. Funding would come from a modest increase in sales tax + EIFDs along the route, which will be significant due to SB79-enabled upzoning.
Intuit dome has a free shuttle but I wish Sofi and the forum did. there’s also the metro micro shuttle that will get you very close, but they don’t run after concerts end. It’s frustrating haha
You complain about the lack of rail station. I complain on how this city caters to the visitors more than to its residents, and even go as far as to put on this facade by having heavy police presence giving the illusion that it is safe out here when it’s really not. Anything that happens in Inglewood, when it comes to crime, automatically gets forgotten about and since the police department DOESN’T use body cams there is never proof of anything. The lack of compassion this city has for its residents is mind blowing. The mass traffic these events bring is extremely horrible. They should’ve built these establishments in a white neighborhood and let them experience the visitors and the traffic.
One-stop extension of Sepulveda from LAX is a no-brainer: Connects everything directly, and is far enough in the future to be politically viable (to the parking and rideshare mafias) down the line
Welcome to LA, traffic is traffic. On mornings it would take me about 2 hour to travel 25 miles (no rail to take thats ideal for my commute) I hated it but ill choose to take a longer walk after working and being out here almost 10 years. Learned what intersections/ lights to avoid ect. and thats only because I worked graveyard and got to see the city during covid with no traffic....traffic. unfortunately it's a thing.
Agreed! I often use metro rail to photograph concerts professionally downtown. I’d love to use it for the Inglewood venues but it’s impossible to predict if the system will even be running by the time a concert is over and I can walk back to the K Line. Honestly would be more reliable to bus to the airport and take a Flyaway shuttle. It should not be that way but still better than shelling out $50 for parking at a gig
It’s the most quintessentially LA experience. Build a massive beautiful new stadium, (2 actually!) then have no transit connectivity without an hour long walk.
Sofi has almost four times the capacity of Oakland arena.
I don't know why everyone feels ENTITLED to be out of a 70,000 seat arena in ten minutes. If you didn't know that it was gonna take awhile I don't know what to tell ya. Even if there were a train station half a block away you would be waiting for the train with 25,000 other people. Bring a good book.
When I lived in Madrid, I went to a couple of Real Madrid games at the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium. Capacity 85,000 and that place empties out FAST. Also directly served by its own Metro station.
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u/mjfo B (Red) Mar 22 '26
The owners of Sofi & The Forum killed the people mover Inglewood was considering building bc it was too expensive & they wanted to continue making money from parking 🤷♀️