Is It Safe To Ride The Los Angeles Metro At Night?

My sons and I recently returned from a few days in Los Angeles and Southern California. We were only there for a few days, so we decided to not rent a car, which meant that we had to rely on public transportation and rideshare (Uber / Lyft) for us to get around town to our various destinations. While most of our public transportation rides were fairly uneventful, we did have one ride on the LA Metro (train) at night that I wanted to talk about, with the goal of sharing our experience as well as hearing from others about whether it is safe to ride the Los Angeles Metro at night.

Riding the LA Metro At Night

The 4 of us were attending a gaming convention at the Pasadena Convention Center which was on Saturday and Sunday.

(SEE ALSO: Hyatt Place Pasadena Hotel Review)

The convention was scheduled to end at 6 p.m. on Sunday, but we ended up staying a bit longer (to watch the finals of the Classic Tetris World Championship, which was awesome). We didn’t end up leaving the convention center until closer to 8 or 8:30 p.m., by which point it was dark.

Our plan had been to take the Los Angeles Metro from Del Mar station in Pasadena to the Aviation / Century stop near LAX. This would be taking the A line from Pasadena through Downtown LA, transferring to the C line at the Willowbrook / Rosa Parks station, over to Aviation / Century. The $1.75 train fare was in contrast to a ~$60-$80 Uber ride.

We walked to the Del Mar station and boarded the A train with no problem and settled in. I was explaining our route to my boys, so they’d know what stop to get off at, and another passenger as he was getting off said something to the effect of “that’s not a station ‘people like you’ should be in at night”. Looking at the map as we were on the A Train from Pasadena, I did see that our transfer station was in the middle of Watts / Compton / Lynwood / South Central LA.

I am not a native Angeleo, so all I know about those areas is what I hear about on “the news”, which is not great. I figured the odds of anything happening there were low, but maybe not zero. I tried to do a bit of googling for reviews and such, and while there were some reports that it was fine, there were other posts / stories / reports talking about bad experiences at that station.

So I decided to pull an audible and switch to the E and K lines at the Little Tokyo / Arts District. Honestly, what do I know about the Little Tokyo area of Los Angeles, and there were other reports online with various claims of safety or not.

In the end, we only waited about 60 seconds for our transfer from the A to the E at the Little Tokyo station, and then at our transfer from the E to the K at Expo / Crenshaw, there were several people making the transfer, including some LA Metro workers who helped us navigate the transfer which is around the corner and requires a separate tap in.

The 10 or 15 minute walk from Aviation / Century to the Hyatt House / Hyatt Place LAX Century Boulevard was similarly uneventful.

We had no problems riding the LA Metro at night, though I could see how some people might be concerned, especially women or those traveling alone. We were 4 adults or adult-sized men, so I figured it was unlikely we would run into any issues as long as we kept our heads down and didn’t bother anyone.

Our Other Experiences With Public Transit In Southern California

In addition to this LA Metro night ride, we took public transit a few other times

• Bus / Metro / Bus from Manhattan Beach – $1.50 per person (we mostly did this to avoid getting someone’s Uber car wet and/or sandy)
• Big Blue Bus #3 from LAX to Santa Monica Pier – $1.50 per person
• Big Blue Bus #3 back to the Hyatt House LAX – $1.50 per person

I’ve also taken the FlyAway bus and LA Metro A line train to Pasadena last year. No real issues or anything unusual to report other than our other nighttime ride, which was on bus #3 back to LAX from the Santa Monica Pier which was… .interesting.

The Bottom Line – Is It Safe To Ride The Los Angeles Metro At Night?

With a relatively small sample size, I’m a bit loath to say that it is completely safe to ride the Los Angeles Metro at night, we didn’t really have any issues, though we did avoid transferring from the A to the C at the Willowbrook / Rosa Parks station. As always, in any big city, you’ll want to be aware of your surroundings and generally keep your head down and not really engage with others. In our case, I am sure that it helped that we were 4 adult-sized men traveling together, which also makes us for less-likely targets for anything untoward.

But I’m interested in experience from anyone else, especially native Angelenos.

Do you have experience riding public transit in Los Angeles at night? Do you think it’s safe to ride the LA Metro at night? Leave your thoughts in the comments below

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