LA Metro’s enhanced response during the six August days of Taylor Swift concerts at SoFi Stadium is being examined as a test for a much bigger event — the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games.
During the pop singer’s concerts from Aug. 3 through Aug 9, a rollout of shuttles, more frequent city buses and late-night rail lines running until 2 a.m. resulted in a 25% overall increase in ridership, Metro reported. The K (Crenshaw) Line increased by 250%, the C (Green) Line by 35% and stadium shuttle passengers carried 30,000 people to and from the Inglewood stadium.
While Metro touted its success at a recent committee meeting, two things became clear if Metro is going to succeed in making the L.A. Olympics carless during 16 days from July 14 to July 30, 2028. First, providing extra transit is costly. Second, any response requires a nimble operation able to meet fluid demands through coordination.
It cost Metro around $660,000 to help Swifties get around without driving for six days in August, the agency reported. And Metro operations had to shift on a dime when the pop singer extended concerts scheduled to end at 11 p.m. to 11:45 p.m. That meant trains and shuttles had to run even later, for example.
“The only certainty is uncertainty,” said John Gordon, director of social media and marketing at Metro, during an assessment of the effort at a Metro committee last week. “There were a lot of needs for us to react to in real time. These are live events and conditions change.”
For concert-goers, Metro renamed stations for six nights. The Hawthorne/Lennox C Line Station had new signs that read “Taylor Nation Station.”
But Gordon said Metro needed more wayfinding signs, especially directing fans after the concert to the Metro shuttle going back to the train stations. Some social media comments were about getting lost or not finding the correct shuttle bus after the show.
“Other things we can do is help people establish where they got off, and so when they…
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