LA Breaks Ground on Subway to Beverly Hills

Decades in the making, a subway extension to Beverly Hills finally broke ground in Los Angeles on Friday.

The extension of the Purple Line, which currently travels between Downtown L.A. and Koreatown via Wilshire Boulevard, will be broken into three segments. The first will run for about four miles and reach the edge of Beverly Hills in about eight years, while the second and third phases include stations near Rodeo Drive and Westwood, the neighborhood that surrounds the University of California, Los Angeles. Read more here.

There is still dispute over a station in the neighborhood of Century City, with the city of Beverly Hills suing Metro over the placement of a subway tunnel under Beverly Hills High School. The wealthy city has long opposed the extension of the subway — helping block it in the 1980s — and some feel the lawsuit is more of the same.

Meanwhile, many wait anxiously for a rapid transit extension into West Hollywood, the walkable, gay enclave just east of Beverly Hills.