The year-and-a-half-old Expo Line light rail, running from DTLA to Culver City, has already exceeded Metro's self-imposed ridership goals for 2020—they projected 27,000 daily riders by then and hit 27,360 average weekday riders in December. (Many of them are, duh, people who live around the line.) While that's encouraging—as is the often-full-during-the-week Culver City park-and-ride lot—there is still more room for additional passengers. "[Morning and afternoon rush hour] are the only times I have someone sitting next to me," rider Tiffany Laurence told Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky's website. "Normally, I have a whole row to myself—it's so luxurious." That's gooood. Metro's rail operations chief, Bruce Shelburne, brings up a very important point, though: That extra room will come in handy when the extension to Santa Monica opens next year or early '16. "We're not breathing hard and we're at 27,000," he said. "If we were at 40,000 I'd be awfully nervous." By 2030, the full Expo Line is expected to attract 64,000 daily riders, more than double the ridership now.
· Record Numbers Riding Easy on Expo [Zev Yaroslavsky]
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