Los Angeles is a city of approximately 13 million people spread across an area the size of a small country, built around the assumption that everyone owns a car and has nowhere particularly urgent to be. The freeway system is vast, the boulevards are endless, and the distances between things that appear adjacent on a map are humbling in practice. Getting from Hollywood to the beach, from Downtown to the Valley, from anywhere to anywhere at 5pm on a weekday will test your relationship with time as a concept.
That said, and this is said with the full awareness that the bar is set low, Los Angeles has made genuine progress on public transport. There is a metro rail system with six lines and over a hundred stations. Buses run across most of the county. A new subway extension opened in May 2026. More are coming, with the 2028 Olympics providing the kind of hard deadline that tends to concentrate municipal minds. Is it comparable to Tokyo, or Paris, or even London? It is not. Is it more functional than many visitors expect? It is. Proceed with calibrated optimism.
Los Angeles Union Station in Downtown LA is the city's principal rail hub, a 1939 Mission Revival building of considerable grandeur that connects Metro Rail, Metrolink commuter rail, Amtrak long-distance services, and a substantial number of bus lines in one place. It is also frequently used as a film location, which either adds to the atmosphere or explains why it sometimes feels like a set depending on your disposition.
Most Metro Rail lines either pass through or connect to Union Station, making it the sensible starting point for navigating the network. The station is on the A Line (light rail to Pasadena and Azusa, or south to Long Beach), the B Line (subway to Hollywood and North Hollywood), and the D Line (subway running west along Wilshire). Metrolink commuter trains to the wider Southern California region depart from here. So do Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner services up the coast to Santa Barbara and San Diego, and the Sunset Limited to New Orleans, if your itinerary has a certain ambition to it.
Metro Rail: The Six Lines
The LA Metro rail network runs six lines, a mix of light rail and heavy rail subway, covering around 195 kilometres of track across the county. The system started in 1990 with one line and has been expanding incrementally ever since, a process that would be less notable if Los Angeles had not spent several decades before that dismantling the extensive streetcar network it used to have. Progress, of a kind.
The lines most useful for visitors are:
B Line (Red) – The main subway, running underground from Union Station through Downtown, up through Hollywood (Hollywood/Highland, Hollywood/Vine) to North Hollywood in the San Fernando Valley. The most urban-feeling part of the system, and the most useful single line for a tourist itinerary.
D Line (Purple) – Shares tracks with the B Line from Union Station to Wilshire/Vermont, then branches west along Wilshire Boulevard through Koreatown. As of May 2026, a new extension has added three stations further west: Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax and Wilshire/La Cienega, putting the Miracle Mile and the edge of Beverly Hills on the rail network for the first time. A further extension to Century City and Westwood is due in 2027, followed by UCLA in the same year.
E Line (Expo) – Light rail from Downtown Santa Monica through Culver City to Downtown LA, following a route that is genuinely useful for getting between the Westside and the centre. Connects to the A Line at 7th Street/Metro Center.
A Line (Blue) – Light rail from Downtown LA south to Long Beach, passing through Compton and Watts. Also connects east to Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley via the Azusa extension.
C and K Lines – Both now terminate at the LAX/Metro Transit Center, which opened in June 2025 and provides the closest thing to a rail connection to the airport. See the airport section below.
Trains run roughly from 05:00 to 00:30, with frequencies of around 10 minutes on most lines during the day. The network map at metro.net is worth downloading before you go, as the line letter system (they renamed everything from colours to letters in 2020) is still not fully absorbed into local muscle memory and you will encounter references to both.
Buses: The Wider Network
Metro also operates one of the largest bus networks in the United States, with several hundred routes across LA County, supplemented by a collection of independent municipal operators serving specific areas. The main ones visitors are likely to encounter include the Big Blue Bus in Santa Monica and the Westside, and the DASH buses operated by LADOT, which run short neighbourhood routes through areas like Downtown, Hollywood, and Venice for 50 cents a ride.
Bus travel in LA is, frankly, time-consuming. The city is large, the routes are long, and the traffic that makes driving frustrating makes buses equally so, since most of them share lanes with cars. For shorter hops or for reaching areas the rail network does not serve, they are useful. For cross-city journeys, the rail lines are faster when they go where you need. The Metro Trip Planner at metro.net handles both rail and bus routing.
Los Angeles International Airport is one of the busiest airports in the world and, until recently, one of the least conveniently connected to public transport. That has changed somewhat.
The LAX/Metro Transit Center, which opened in June 2025, sits at Aviation Boulevard and 96th Street and connects the C Line and K Line light rail services with a free shuttle bus to the airport terminals. The shuttle runs every ten minutes. It is not seamless – there is a transfer involved, and the shuttle adds time – but it is functional and free once you are at the station. A direct automated people mover connecting the Transit Center to the terminals is expected to open later in 2026, at which point the connection will be genuinely good.
From the Transit Center, the C Line runs east to Norwalk, passing through El Segundo, Hawthorne and Compton. The K Line connects north to the E Line at Expo/Crenshaw, from which Downtown is around 35 minutes. Journey times from LAX to Downtown via this connection are in the region of 50 to 60 minutes depending on transfers. The LAX FlyAway bus runs non-stop between the airport and Union Station in around 30 to 40 minutes (traffic permitting, which is never guaranteed), and is a straightforward option for those based centrally. Tickets at flylax.com/flyaway.
Taxis and ride-hailing from LAX are abundant and expensive, particularly given the airport surcharges and the near-certainty of traffic. Budget at least $35–60 to most central locations depending on traffic and time of day.
Metrolink: Commuter Rail Beyond the City
Metrolink is the regional commuter rail network serving the wider Southern California area, with eight lines radiating from Union Station to places like Ventura, San Bernardino, Riverside, and Oceanside near San Diego. It is primarily a service for commuters rather than tourists, running more frequently during peak hours and considerably less so at other times. If you are based in LA and planning a day trip to San Diego or Santa Barbara, Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner is the more practical option; Metrolink fares and schedules are better suited to those travelling to the suburbs on a regular basis.
The TAP Card: How to Pay
All Metro Rail and bus services use the TAP card, a reloadable contactless fare card that also works on 27 other transit agencies across the county. A physical card costs $2 plus fare and is available from vending machines at all rail stations. Alternatively, a virtual TAP card can be added to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet via the TAP LA app, which skips the $2 card fee.
Metro's fare capping system works in the visitor's favour:
Base fare: $1.75 per ride on Metro bus and rail, with two hours of free transfers included.
Daily cap: $5. Once you have paid for three rides in a day, the rest are free.
Weekly cap: $18. After that, travel on Metro is free for the remainder of the seven-day period.
This means there is no need to buy a separate day pass. Simply load stored value onto the TAP card (or use a contactless bank card, which also benefits from capping), tap at validators on buses and at rail station entry gates, and let the system handle it. The older weekly and monthly passes have been discontinued; fare capping is now the approach for frequent travel.
Taxis and Ride-Hailing
Uber and Lyft both operate extensively in LA and are the default choice for many visitors, particularly for journeys that the rail network does not serve conveniently. They work well in the usual way, with the usual caveat that prices rise during peak hours and around LAX specifically. Traditional metered taxis are available but less commonly used; they can be found at airport taxi ranks and major hotels.
One practical note: a ride from LAX to Hollywood will often cost $35–50 in ordinary conditions and considerably more during rush hour. Having the Metro connection available as an alternative is worth knowing about, even if it takes longer.
Most visitors to Los Angeles rent a car, and for many itineraries it remains the practical choice. The city's geography – sprawling, neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood, with significant distances between things – does not always submit to public transport. The coast, the canyons, the hills, the outer districts: a car opens these up in a way a metro line cannot.
The things worth knowing before you do: rush hour in LA is not a polite forty-five minutes. It begins around 6:30am and runs to 10am; it resumes at 3pm and does not reliably end until 7pm or later on the freeways. The 405, the 10, the 101 – these numbers will mean something to you by the end of your first day. Parking costs vary from metered street parking at $1–4 per hour in most areas, to $8–30 per day in garages, to something significantly more depressing in central Hollywood or Santa Monica on a weekend. Valet parking at restaurants is common and often cheaper than finding a spot independently, which tells you something about the city's priorities.
Navigation apps (Google Maps, Waze) are genuinely useful in LA in a way they are not always elsewhere: the real-time traffic routing can make a material difference to journey times, and locals use them constantly. Set your GPS before you start moving, not during. The freeway on-ramps arrive faster than they look on a screen.
Walking and Cycling
Walking in Los Angeles is possible and, in specific areas, actively enjoyable. Venice Beach, Santa Monica, Silver Lake, Los Feliz, parts of Downtown and Hollywood: these are all navigable on foot in a way that will not seem absurd. Between these areas, however, distances are generally too large and pavements too intermittent for walking to be a practical cross-city strategy. This is not a city that was designed around pedestrians, and parts of it will remind you of that fairly directly.
Cycling is growing, with a Metro Bike Share scheme and a slowly expanding network of protected lanes, but the terrain is uneven, drivers are variable, and the distances involved in most LA itineraries are not easily covered by bicycle. Along the beach paths from Santa Monica to Venice and beyond is a genuinely good cycling route; most other situations call for more local knowledge than a first-time visitor is likely to have.
