Pasadena’s Six Metro Stations See an 11.3% Ridership Jump on the A Line

The light-rail trains that pass under Memorial Park and pull into Del Mar and Sierra Madre Villa carried noticeably more riders in May than they did a year ago — about one in nine more, according to Metro’s own count.

Metro reported on June 14 that A Line ridership rose 11.3% in May compared with the same month a year earlier, outpacing the 9.5% gain across the rail system as a whole.

The A Line — formerly the Gold Line — is the only Metro rail line serving Pasadena, with stations at Fillmore, Del Mar, Memorial Park, Lake, Allen, and Sierra Madre Villa. Weekend gains on the line were sharper still, with Saturday ridership up 21.3% and Sunday up 18.5% year-over-year, according to the agency’s press release. Both figures surpassed the systemwide weekend rail average of 18%, making the A Line one of the top-performing rail lines in the system during that period.

Memorial Park sits blocks from Old Pasadena. Del Mar borders the Rose Parade route. Allen and Sierra Madre Villa anchor the eastern end of the city. From any of them, a rider can reach Long Beach in one direction or Pomona in the other without changing trains — a stretch the line itself didn’t cover a year ago.

The A Line opened its extension from Glendora to Pomona on September 19, 2025, adding four stations and restoring light-rail service to the San Gabriel Valley for the first time since 1951, according to Metro and the Los Angeles Times. Metro had projected the extension would add an estimated 11,600 daily weekday boardings.

Across the whole Metro network, May was a mixed month. Bus ridership fell 4.9%, which dragged the combined system down 1.8% from May 2025, even as rail ridership totaled 6,472,058 trips and total system ridership reached 26,966,657, the agency said. Metro framed the report as the sixth straight month of year-over-year rail growth. Most of the systemwide gains came from the D Line, where three new stations opened May 8 and ridership jumped 62%.

“The opening of the new D Line stations is already making a meaningful difference, connecting more Angelenos to jobs, educational opportunities, entertainment, and cultural destinations across our region,” Fernando Dutra, the Metro Board Chair, said in the agency’s press release. “These ridership numbers show that when we invest in fast, reliable and convenient transit, people respond.”

Metro Chief Executive Stephanie Wiggins, in the same press release, said riders are choosing rail “because — frankly — it provides a better alternative than sitting in traffic.”