The final line in Los Angeles's holy trinity of future rail: Vermont corridor

Full disclosure, I haven't watched the entire video. Sorry if I'm repeating or contradicting anything from it, but from what I gathered, it's mostly focused on construction/planning aspect. Also, I don't have a background or significant interest in this kind of stuff, so this is mostly vibes based analysis from someone who lived just off of Vermont for a few years.

As you might have heard, LA is not so much a city, but a weird conglomerate of neighborhoods that sort of melt together. A lot of cities are like that to some degree, but when you combine that with the high population, the geography, and the freeway system that carves through neighborhoods, you're left with surprisingly few major surface streets that connect the different neighborhoods. Traveling between neighborhoods can be a real pain in the ass. One of my best friends lived 9 miles from me and the last time I saw him was at his wedding. In 2023. In Mexico.

Vermont is one of those major surface streets that connects several different popular areas. It runs through Koreatown, USC, South LA and Los Feliz, and it intersects with other major streets and metro lines that go through Hollywood, Silver Lake, DTLA, mid city, and eventually Beverly Hills. It's a convenient stretch, but it gets quite busy.

As you can see from your map, Vermont/Wilshire is major station, not just for trains, but buses as well. By LA standards, this area of Vermont has a ton of foot traffic and people who rely on public transit. Same goes for some intersections just north of there, like Vermont & 3rd and Vermont & Beverly. (Not so fun fact: there used to be billboards around there that said more pedestrians were hit and killed on Vermont Ave than all of Vermont the state.)

As you go further south along the proposed line, the blocks surrounding Vermont are much more residential. That area is lower income and a bit of a wasteland with regard to transportation options. If you take a look at a map of LA, you can see the more recognizable and expensive areas (Hollywood, Koreatown, Silver Lake, Echo Park) are tightly packed and fairly close to the freeways and trains, then as you go south, there is a huge circle between the 110 and 105 that has nothing. There's no rail access nearby, so instead you're stuck riding the bus or driving on some very congested surface streets until you get to one of the perpetually congested freeways. Without a car, any trip that takes you from South LA to one of the existing train stops beyond Vermont/Wilshire would be quite a journey. Even if you have a car, it's not going to be very fun, especially if parking is a concern. So a line that goes down that stretch of Vermont will give a ton of people better access to the rest of the city and (hopefully) alleviate congestion on a fairly important street and a very important freeway.