Who Can Actually Reach the Beverly Hills Subway Stop, and Why the City Is Holding Off on a Shuttle

Crews recently installed new street signs carrying the Beverly Hills city logo on the traffic signals at Wilshire and La Cienega, as the Beverly Press reported on October 8, 2026. The signs mark a fact many residents still treat as a Miracle Mile story. The Wilshire/La Cienega station of the Metro D Line sits inside Beverly Hills, with its entrance at the northeast corner of the intersection. It has carried trains since May 8, 2026.

So Beverly Hills now has a subway station. Apart from the Metro buses that stop at the intersection, the city has nothing that brings residents to it. On August 4, the City Council looked at a citywide ride service built to fill that gap and turned it down. The council spent its transit money on a safety facility at the station and pushed the question of reaching it back to spring 2027, when a second station is forecast to open at Wilshire and Reeves. Until then, connections to the D Line include the Wilshire and La Cienega buses, bike access, and drop-offs at the city's eastern edge.

What the station offers today

Metro's opening guide for Section 1 laid out the basics for riders. These figures describe service at launch in May 2026, and Metro may have adjusted them since.

The table has no parking row because none of the materials reviewed list a car park or a designated drop-off zone at La Cienega.

The station's art runs from street to platform. Todd Gray's Mining the Archive: S. Charles Lee, Architect is at the entrance. Mariana Castillo Deball's Four Pleated Landscapes: Fossil Ground, Woven Cienega, Medicinal Flora, and Urban Desert Fauna is on the concourse. Soo Kim's Night / Quartz is on the platform.

Where a ride from La Cienega goes

The most useful trip for a Beverly Hills resident is one stop east. Metro's rider guide for the opening lists the Academy Museum, Craft Contemporary, LACMA, the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum, and the Petersen as steps from Wilshire/Fairfax. That stop gained a new draw this year. LACMA's David Geffen Galleries are now open. The Academy Museum is open Wednesday through Monday and closed Tuesdays.

For a museum evening, that means no circling the Miracle Mile for parking. For a downtown dinner, a show or a train out of Union Station, the trip from La Cienega takes just over 20 minutes and never touches surface traffic. Closer to home, the same guide points out Restaurant Row near the station, including Lawry's.

In a release dated June 15, 2026, Metro estimated that the three new stations added 8,000 to 10,000 rides per day in May. D Line ridership was up 62% over the same month a year earlier, and weekend ridership grew nearly 80%. That weekend jump fits the museum trips above. Metro did not publish a count for La Cienega alone.

The vote that left the first mile to riders

Beverly Hills had a plan for the gap between a front door and the platform. As the Beverly Press reported, the plan came out of the city's 2022 Transit Needs Assessment, which flagged first- and last-mile connections to Metro stations as an unmet need. Via Transportation would have run an on-demand shared service. Riders could book through an app or by phone and travel anywhere in Beverly Hills, to the D Line stations on Wilshire, and to the Cedars-Sinai area. The existing Dial-A-Ride program would have been folded in, so seniors could still book trips in advance.

The numbers are what stopped it. The two-year pilot was estimated at about $3.1 million, including roughly $112,000 in startup costs. It would have used four dedicated electric vehicles plus one spare. Via projected about 200 rides per day at roughly $20 per trip. Staff proposed paying for it entirely with Proposition A transit funds. The city holds about $4.8 million in Prop A reserves and receives roughly $840,000 more each year.

At $3.1 million, two years of the pilot would cost well over the roughly $1.7 million in new Prop A revenue the city would collect in the same period. Mayor Craig Corman put it plainly in the Beverly Press account: "The most we could possibly get would be four years of cost neutrality then it goes into the red." Success would make things worse, he added, because demand for more cars would push the program "even deeper into the red." Councilwoman Rebecca Pynoos pointed to the low number of Dial-A-Ride trips today and asked whether a four-to-five-vehicle fleet was needed.

The council voted it down. Instead it approved $2.2 million in Prop A funds toward building a Public Safety Center at the Wilshire/La Cienega station. Staff noted this frees an equal amount of General Fund money for other city priorities. Corman also listed other uses the council had in mind for the restricted funds: "a drop-off lane … building parking at the Gale Yard property … a security facility near the Reeves station."

That list includes a drop-off lane and parking, the two things missing from the station table above. They remain ideas, with no funding attached in the reporting.

Why the council is waiting for Reeves

The objection that shaped the delay was about timing more than cost. Councilman Lester Friedman, in the same Beverly Press report, argued that a test run with only one station would show little:

"Rolling this out before the Reeves/Beverly Drive/Rodeo station is opened may not really be the best test of what the microtransit system could bring us."

He added that any future program should focus on trips to and from Metro stations, not serve as a cheap substitute for rideshare to any destination. Vice Mayor Mary Wells proposed something smaller along the same lines. She would combine first- and last-mile service with Dial-A-Ride and keep the cost within the roughly $800,000 the city expects to receive each year. Councilwoman Sharona Nazarian, who was mayor when the Beverly Press previewed the opening in March, said she saw "a lot of holes in this model" and wanted data before a pilot became routine.

The station they are waiting on now has a firm name and location. The stop once called Wilshire/Rodeo is officially Beverly Dr. The Metro Board adopted that name on May 22, 2025. Its entrance will be at the southwest corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Reeves Drive. Metro's September 2026 community presentation forecasts Section 2 service, including Beverly Dr and Century City, for spring 2027. The full extension to Westwood is forecast for fall 2027. Both dates are marked subject to change.

Once both stations are open, a first-mile service would connect two Beverly Hills stops instead of one stop at the edge of the city. The council's reasoning is that a pilot run on that network would show whether residents would actually use it.

What Wilshire looks like until then

In the meantime, the future station is mostly a work zone. According to the Beverly Press's October 8 update, crews are working behind K-rail on both sides of Wilshire at Beverly Drive. Two lanes stay open in each direction between Beverly and Crescent drives. The north-side sidewalks may close, and Beverly Drive may narrow to one lane each way. Metro's October look-ahead for the site adds work in the Maybourne alley between Cañon and Beverly, reconstruction of the Reeves driveway, and sidewalk and ADA-ramp work with pedestrian detours. Metro says pedestrian access will be maintained throughout.

The open station still has construction around it. Metro's October notice for Wilshire/La Cienega forecasts intermittent lane closures on Wilshire, south-side sidewalk closures with signed detours, and lane reductions on La Cienega that may affect crosswalks at the intersection. Metro's September presentation also lists Beverly Dr station structure work as continuing through 2026, with entrance, elevator, track and concourse work all active.

That sets this fall's routine. LACMA is one stop from Wilshire and La Cienega, and Union Station is about 20 minutes away. Metro buses stop at the intersection, bike lockers are available at the station, and riders can be dropped off at the corner. Beverly Drive will be lane-restricted for months before its own station opens.

For owners near Wilshire, the months between the two openings mean living with construction while transit access arrives one block at a time. If you would like to discuss how the Beverly Dr and La Cienega entrances figure into your plans for a property through 2027, The Smith Associates can model it with you directly. Book an Appointment.