All Six Metro Rail Lines, Ranked by the Last Train That Actually Gets You Home

Metro prints a final departure for all six rail lines. On the C and the K, the last one a downtown rider can still reach leaves at 11:43 and 11:38 p.m., because the train that feeds them stops first.

The last scheduled train in Los Angeles leaves 7th Street/Metro Center at 12:44 a.m., and it will not take you to the place printed on the front of the timetable. The A Line schedule effective June 7 runs "Pomona – Long Beach," and its final northbound trip carries a footnote — E, "Trip ends at APU/Citrus Station" — which is two stations short of Pomona North. The dashes in the last two columns are the whole story: everyone still aboard at 1:44 a.m. gets off at APU/Citrus College.

So here are the criteria, stated once, because this ranking turns on a distinction Metro's own pages don't draw. We read the published timetable for all six rail lines — five PDFs, because the B and D share a grid — and pulled the final trip of every line in both directions. Then we matched each line's last departures against the trains that feed it, because a last train you cannot reach is a rumor with a time attached. The order is by the latest departure from downtown Los Angeles that ends with you on the line in question — two of the six never touch downtown, and for those the number is the connection, not the train. Nobody at this desk rode anything. The times are Metro's, printed, and current as of today.

1. A Line — 12:44 a.m., the latest train in the county, going two stops less far than advertised

First place comes down to three minutes and to what happens after 1 a.m. The last northbound A Line leaves 7th Street/Metro Center at 12:44 a.m. and reaches APU/Citrus College at 1:44 a.m., the latest arrival printed anywhere on Metro rail. The last southbound leaves 7th Street a minute earlier, at 12:43 a.m., and pulls into Downtown Long Beach at 1:42 a.m. Two directions, the two longest final runs on the system — an hour each — one minute apart.

The asterisk costs the far end of the line 40 minutes. The last train that actually serves San Dimas and Pomona North departs 7th Street at 12:04 a.m. and arrives at 1:19 a.m.; after that the schedule turns those two columns into dashes. Trains run every 20 minutes through the last hour, and the timetable adds a note nobody else prints: A Line trains "will pause briefly (1-2 min) at Union Station for crew change and onboard cleaning." At 1 a.m., two minutes for a clean car is a fair trade.

2. E Line — 12:38 a.m., and 47 minutes from downtown to the ocean

Three minutes behind the A Line, and it goes to the beach. The E Line timetable puts the last westbound out of 7th Street at 12:38 a.m. and into Downtown Santa Monica at 1:25 a.m. — 47 minutes, downtown to the ocean, on the last train of the night. Eastbound is later still: 12:41 a.m. from 7th Street, Atlantic at 1:03 a.m.

It places second because the A Line beats it in both directions and stays out longer. It matters more than second place suggests, because the E Line is also the gate on somebody else's night: it is the K Line's rail connection to downtown, and the hour at which it stops calling at Expo/Crenshaw sets the deadline for the whole Crenshaw corridor. One more thing we noticed while we were counting: this is the oldest timetable in the system. The other four schedules were reissued June 7, 2026. The E Line is still running the one that took effect December 14, 2025.

3. D Line — 12:18 a.m., the newest stations and the shortest late trip in the system

The last westbound D Line leaves 7th Street at 12:18 a.m. and terminates at Wilshire/La Cienega at 12:33 a.m., which is a fifteen-minute night. Going the other way, the last train out of La Cienega is 12:04 a.m., reaching 7th Street at 12:19 a.m. and Union Station at 12:27 a.m. Both times come from the combined B and D timetable, which prints the two lines on one grid because they share the tunnel from Union Station to Wilshire/Vermont.

Third is a strong showing for a line that was three stations shorter in April. Metro's own release says the D Line's three new stations opened May 8, 2026, that the line's May ridership rose 62 percent year over year, and that its weekend growth ran near 80 percent. The newest thing in the system has the third-latest train on it, and the shortest one.

4. B Line — 12:08 a.m., and the last train out of Hollywood/Vine is 12:14 a.m.

The pick we expect to argue about. The subway that runs under Hollywood Boulevard, Universal City and Vermont Avenue — the line most likely to be carrying somebody home from a night out — closes its night before any of the other three downtown lines. The last westbound B Line leaves 7th Street at 12:08 a.m. and reaches North Hollywood at 12:34 a.m. The last eastbound leaves North Hollywood at 12:03 a.m., calls at Hollywood/Highland at 12:12 a.m. and Hollywood/Vine at 12:14 a.m., and finishes at Union Station at 12:37 a.m.

Now set that against the other clock the neighborhood runs on. California bars stop serving at 2 a.m.; Business and Professions Code section 25631 makes a sale between 2 and 6 a.m. a misdemeanor. The last train out of the middle of Hollywood departs 106 minutes before last call, and Hollywood has no other rail line.

The objection we expect, and the answer: frequency. The shared tunnel is the best-served stretch of track in Los Angeles, and the timetable proves it in its own last three departures — 11:58 p.m., 12:08 and 12:18 a.m. out of 7th Street, ten minutes apart, where every other rail line is down to one train every 20. That is a real advantage and it is the wrong measurement for this ranking. Frequency is a promise about how long you wait. Span is a promise about whether you get home. At 12:40 a.m. on Hollywood Boulevard, a ten-minute headway on a line that has stopped running is worth exactly nothing.

5. C Line — 11:43 p.m., because the transfer is printed at zero minutes

Read on its own, the C Line timetable looks generous: the last westbound trip leaves Willowbrook/Rosa Parks at 12:30 a.m. and arrives at the LAX/Metro Transit Center at 12:49 a.m. Read next to the A Line, the only other rail line that stops at Willowbrook, it stops looking generous. The A Line's southbound arrivals there are printed at 11:50 p.m., 12:10, 12:30, 12:50 and 1:10 a.m. The C Line's last three westbound departures from the same station are printed at 11:50 p.m., 12:10 and 12:30 a.m. Three consecutive connections, each with a printed transfer window of zero minutes.

Which is why the honest number is 11:43 p.m. That is the last southbound A Line out of 7th Street that reaches Willowbrook — at 12:10 a.m. — with any cushion at all before the final C Line leaves at 12:30. It also makes 11:43 p.m. the last departure from downtown, on any line, that reaches the station the K Line's own map labels "Connect to LAX Passenger Terminals." Coming back is worse: the last two eastbound C Line trains reach Willowbrook at 12:19 and 12:39 a.m., and the last downtown-bound A Line left that platform at 12:14. Those two trainloads can still go south to Long Beach. They cannot go north.

6. K Line — 11:38 p.m., and its own last northbound train ends where nothing runs toward downtown

Last, on the same arithmetic, five minutes worse. The K Line timetable puts the final southbound trip out of Expo/Crenshaw at 12:13 a.m., through the LAX/Metro Transit Center at 12:32 and into Redondo Beach at 12:45 a.m. To be on it you have to leave 7th Street on the 11:38 p.m. E Line, which reaches Expo/Crenshaw at 11:59 p.m. The next E Line west gets there at 12:19 a.m. — six minutes after the K Line has gone.

The other direction produces the single starkest line in these timetables. The last northbound K Line leaves Redondo Beach at 12:05 a.m. and arrives at Expo/Crenshaw at 12:38 a.m. The last eastbound E Line left that platform at 12:23 a.m. There is still a westbound train at 12:59 a.m., toward Santa Monica. A rider who takes the final K Line train of the night as far as it goes arrives at a transfer station where the only remaining service runs away from downtown.

None of this is a story about a line running empty. Metro's May figures put K Line ridership up 48 percent year over year, with Saturdays up 62.7 percent and Sundays up 60.5.

Saturday night gets exactly the Tuesday timetable

We compared the weekend panel of every one of the six timetables against its own weekday panel, and the last departures match to the minute. The A Line's final northbound leaves 7th Street at 12:44 a.m. on a Saturday, the same as a Tuesday. The E Line's last westbound is 12:38 a.m. either way. The B Line's is 12:08, the D Line's 12:18, the K Line's last southbound 12:13, the C Line's last westbound 12:30. There is no late-night weekend service on Metro rail, because there is no weekend rail schedule that runs later than the weekday one.

That is a choice about the exact hours the system is growing fastest. In the same May release, Metro reported weekend rail ridership up 18 percent year over year against 8 percent on weekdays, with A Line Saturdays up 21.3 percent and the D Line's weekends up nearly 80 percent. Six lines, one set of last trains, and the night that is growing twice as fast gets not one extra minute.

Not ranked, and why

The G Line and the J Line are busways, not rail, and they are not on this list — but the G Line is the reason the list stings. Its published timetable prints eastbound trips at 12:36, 1:06, 2:06 and 3:06 a.m. The rail timetables print nothing at all after 1:44. The Owl buses take the hours the trains give up, and the rail schedules name them in their own connection lists: Metro Local 60 Owl at the A Line's Willow Street station, Line 40 Owl at the LAX/Metro Transit Center and Aviation/Century.

One more line of fine print, printed by Metro on the timetables themselves, applies to every hour this ranking is about: "All Rail Lines after 8pm are subject to Service Delays for systemwide maintenance." The B and D grid puts the same warning at 9 p.m. Every departure above is a scheduled time on a system that tells you, in its own footnotes, that the late ones are the least certain.

Add it up and the shape is clear. Four lines will carry you out of downtown after midnight, and the two that will not are the two that serve the airport station, Inglewood, Leimert Park, Hawthorne, Lynwood and Norwalk. The system's latest train is 12:44 a.m. The city's bars close at 2. Nothing in these six timetables closes that gap, and no Saturday changes it.