West Hollywood’s K Line Vote Is Thursday. Is It Already Off the Rails?

West Hollywood spent a decade getting to this week. Over $3 million in outreach, consultants, and studies. A rally. A shuttle bus. Five jurisdictions showing up to make the case. Metro staff recommending the route the City wanted.

And then the committee that was supposed to send it to the full Board with a recommendation didn’t.

Metro’s Planning and Programming Committee met last Wednesday to take up the K Line Northern Extension route. Metro Board Member Ara Najarian, who led the committee meeting, didn’t put it to a vote. He punted. Said he wanted the full Board to handle it Thursday at what he called a “more august forum.” Najarian told LAist he supports the staff-recommended San Vicente-Fairfax route. But he wanted to make sure Mayor Karen Bass could weigh in.

Should that worry West Hollywood?

Bass doesn’t just have a seat on the Metro Board. She controls four of the 13 voting seats. Her own, plus three appointees. Seven votes are needed to pass anything. One person controls more than half of what’s needed to approve or kill this route.

Her office said she “supports the K Line Northern extension.” Read that carefully. She didn’t say she supports the San Vicente-Fairfax route. She said she supports “the extension.” Those aren’t the same thing. There are three routes. One of them gives West Hollywood three stations. The other two give it one.

Bass met privately with Lafayette Square residents on March 11 and again on March 16, LAist reported. Lafayette Square is a historic Mid City LA neighborhood along the proposed route. Those residents have fought this project for years. Their main complaint right now: Metro plans to demolish a Ralph’s and a drugstore for construction. Metro says it’ll relocate the Ralph’s first. The residents aren’t buying it.

“They still want to tear down our only grocery store and our only drugstore,” Wade Eck, a 25-year Lafayette Square resident, told LAist. “That’s where people should really question what’s going on.”

Here’s where it gets interesting. One of Bass’s three appointees on the Metro Board is Jacquelyn Dupont-Walker. She recused herself from Wednesday’s public committee meeting. Cited a “perceived conflict.”

The conflict is that she lives in Lafayette Square. The neighborhood fighting the route.

But she didn’t recuse herself from the private meetings. LAist reported Dupont-Walker attended both of Bass’s meetings with Lafayette Square residents. March 11. March 16. Bass’s own office confirmed it. Dupont-Walker recused herself from the public meeting where the cameras were on but sat in the room for the private ones where they weren’t.

She declined to say what capacity she was there in. “Unfortunately while deliberations are in process this month, I am not engaging regarding this matter,” she said.

Najarian wasn’t the only committee member who wavered. Streetsblog reported that Inglewood Mayor James Butts also helped postpone the committee vote after what Streetsblog described as “anti-rail voices” from Lafayette Square swayed both members. Najarian told LAist he supports the route. His actions at the committee meeting told a different story.

Streetsblog drew a direct parallel to what happened with the K Line extension to Torrance in January. That committee also postponed. The full Board then overrode staff and picked a more expensive, potentially unbuildable alternative that the City of Torrance called “devastating.” Transit advocates worry Thursday could go the same way.

If Dupont-Walker’s recusal holds Thursday, Bass loses one of her four votes. She’d still have three. Horvath is a yes. Yaroslavsky, who is also a Bass appointee, is a yes. Najarian said he supports the route. That’s potentially six if Bass herself votes yes on the specific route her office hasn’t endorsed. They need seven. The rest have to come from the five County Supervisors and remaining city selection committee members. Nobody else has said publicly where they stand.

Metro spent an additional $2.3 million on analysis and outreach after the Board directed it in October 2024, specifically because of Lafayette Square concerns. The result was a modified route that minimizes underground easements under residential neighborhoods and assurances that tunneling would be deep enough to eliminate surface disruption.

It wasn’t enough for the residents. They went around the public process and straight to the mayor.

Supervisor Horvath told LAist she sees Thursday as a test of whether Metro is serious. “Are they interested in being serious partners in building infrastructure when people come to the table with billions of dollars to invest?” she said. “Or are we going to move in a different direction?”

Councilmember Chelsea Byers told them a quick vote Thursday is “critical” to West Hollywood’s financing plan. The City has a “huge list” of redevelopment projects coming that feed the EIFD mechanism. Delay costs money. Every month the route isn’t locked down is a month the City can’t start building the financing district that’s supposed to pay for it.

The full Metro Board meets Thursday, March 26 at 10 a.m. at Metro Headquarters, One Gateway Plaza, downtown Los Angeles. The City’s free shuttle leaves West Hollywood Park at 8:15 a.m. Details at weho.org/metro.

LAist’s full report is here.

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