Metro Breaks Ground on East San Fernando Valley Light Rail Line on Van Nuys Boulevard

LOS ANGELES

Rail is coming back to Van Nuys Boulevard. On Monday, October 19, 2026, LA Metro broke ground on the East San Fernando Valley Light Rail Transit Project at the Van Nuys Civic Center, according to a release from Mayor Karen Bass's office, with Bass — who chairs the Metro Board — joining Valley leaders to mark the start of construction on a line that local advocates have pursued for decades.

The project is a 6.7-mile light rail line running in the center of Van Nuys Boulevard, with 11 street-level stations, from the Metro G Line in Van Nuys north through Panorama City and Arleta to San Fernando Road in Pacoima. MyNewsLA listed the stations as Van Nuys Metro G Line, Victory, Vanowen, Sherman Way, Van Nuys Metrolink, Roscoe, Nordhoff, Woodman, Arleta, Laurel Canyon and San Fernando. Trains are planned to run every seven to ten minutes at peak periods, according to Metro.

First local-stop rail on the boulevard in more than 70 years

The groundbreaking carries a historical weight that speakers at the ceremony underlined. This will be the first local-stop rail service on Van Nuys Boulevard in more than 70 years: Pacific Electric service on the corridor ended in 1952. In the decades since, the boulevard has been served by buses, and Metro says those buses are heavily used — the corridor's bus lines, Metro 233 and 761, recorded almost 20,000 boardings in September, according to the mayor's release.

The need, Metro argues, is visible in who lives along the route. About 19 percent of corridor households have no car, compared with 8 percent countywide, according to figures cited in the release. For those households, a bus stuck in boulevard traffic is not a backup option; it is the only option. A train running in its own center-of-the-road alignment is meant to change that calculation.

“The East San Fernando Valley deserves an affordable and safe transit system that provides reliable access to jobs, healthcare, schools and local businesses,” Bass said in the release.

Councilmember Imelda Padilla, who also sits on the Metro board, called the project “a historical, epic investment for our communities” in the release, adding: “Bringing rail back to Van Nuys Boulevard after more than 70 years is about more than connecting people to jobs, schools, and essential services.”

A nearly four billion dollars line, and a long road to funding

The line will cost nearly four billion dollars, a budget the Metro Board approved in May, according to coverage by Trains Magazine and Urbanize LA. The LA Times has reported that the project's initial estimate, in the 2018 era, was $1.3 billion with a 2027 opening — a contrast that has followed the project through years of planning and that riders in the Valley are well aware of.

The money comes from local and federal sources combined. Measures R and M, the county transportation sales taxes approved by Los Angeles County voters, provide local funding, and the project received an $893 million federal grant awarded in September 2024 — the first grant made under the Federal Transit Administration's Expedited Project Delivery Pilot Program, according to the mayor's office. Metro achieved full funding for the project in 2024, after pre-construction utility relocation work had already begun in 2022.

The physical project is larger than the tracks on the boulevard. It includes a 26-acre rail yard and maintenance facility in Van Nuys and 33 light rail vehicles, according to Railway Track & Structures and construction coverage of the project.

Connections across the Valley — and a 2032 opening

Metro is selling the line as a connector, not just a boulevard service. At its southern end it meets the Metro G Line in Van Nuys. It also connects with Metrolink's Ventura County Line at the Van Nuys station and with Amtrak service, and a planned Antelope Valley Line station in Pacoima would add another regional rail link. Metro says the line provides access to about 150,000 jobs, and that construction and operations will support more than 18,000 direct and indirect jobs, according to the mayor's release.

The wait, however, is long. The initial segment is projected to open in 2032, according to Trains Magazine, Urbanize LA and the mayor's office — six years after Monday's groundbreaking, reflecting the scale of utility work, construction along a live commercial boulevard, and the rail yard and vehicle procurement that accompany the tracks.

What comes after the first segment is not settled. A second phase would extend the line about 2.5 miles, with three more stations, north to the Sylmar/San Fernando Metrolink station. Urbanize LA reports that extension may instead be realized as a Metrolink Antelope Valley Line infill stop — a materially different outcome for riders north of Pacoima, and one that remains unresolved in current reporting.

For now, the Valley has a groundbreaking, a funded first segment and a boulevard about to be rebuilt around rails it has not carried since 1952. Elsewhere in Los Angeles County, Previously has covered how coastal communities are weighing infrastructure against a changing shoreline in its report on Westward Beach in Malibu. On Van Nuys Boulevard, the question for the next six years is more concrete: whether a project that waited more than 70 years for rail to return can hold its 2032 date.