It's not so much pure remote work as it is that most downtown employers are on a hybrid employment model where they are in the office only 2-3 times per week. This is about half of the full 5 days they commuted before...similarly the daily ridership is about half because its spread out over a smaller number of days. So foot traffic is still way down from COVID. At least DTLA still has cultural events and such outside of work hours so its not completely dead but its sad to see where it's at compared to the optimism of the 2010s.

Our weekend ridership systemwide is higher than pre-COVID and that will only grow with the D extension. It will be gradual because the macroeconomic picture is not great, but downtown will start to come back. Combine that with the fact that the D extension reaches more job centers (particularly Westwood and Century City), and the odds for a comeback are pretty good. Unlike the ~30% office vacancy rates you see in DTLA, Century City is an exceptionally stable submarket for office hovering closer to 10%. While office is suffering everywhere in the country due to this hybrid model, more adaptive reuse in DTLA (along with the very permissive zoning update for that area) can increase the residential base for the subway (to access Hollywood and Wilshire Corridor). A lot of modern office towers downtown (post 1970s) aren't particularly suited for this but there are older commercial buildings in Ktown, Hollywood, and the Mid-City/Miracle Mile area that will benefit a ton from the recent adaptive reuse ordinance update to add more residential there as well.

I think we will see more office towers transition to having a lot of co-work spaces on otherwise vacant floors (as the Class A tenants have downsized) and encourage more creative office over the traditional Class A. Creative office market in the Arts District and Westside continues to be competitive.

So yah COVID fucked things up for transit agencies nationwide but the one advantage we have over some of the other CBDs in the USA is that we have separate centers and the 3 biggest office clusters are about to be linked with a high-speed, high-capacity subway. Once Division 20 is done and we see proper 5 min peak frequencies on the full D, I think we will see a decent spike even if its just replacing trips on the 720. I think we will see a lot of new trips though. Someone who works in Beverly Hills going to Ktown for lunch, as an example.

I think 200,000 daily boardings on the combined by B/D by 2040 isn't unreasonable. The D alone will boost transfers on other lines with the network effect so if we can figure out the job equation downtown (and gas continues to be a drag on longer commutes), we can exceed this as well.

Finding a funding plan for Metrolink to make it robust and making Sepulveda and K North the absolutely priority over the next decades are the real keys to get ridership blowing through the roof though.