Getting to an LA venue is rarely the hard part. Getting home at 11pm is.
Four options cover almost every night out in this county. All four work. All four have a limit, and the limit is the thing you plan around.
Driving yourself
The best option when you have a vehicle, and the one with the most homework attached.
Vertical clearance is the trap. ADA accessible parking has to give 98 inches of clearance along the route to a van-accessible space and at the space itself. Plenty of older LA structures post a limit around 6 feet 8 inches at the entrance.
A raised-roof van does not fit under that, and finding out at the gate with a line of cars behind you is a bad start to a night.
Call the garage, ask what clearance is posted, and ask which level the van-accessible spaces are on. Ask whether the venue runs its own lot, because a stadium’s ADA lot and its general lots are often sold separately and at different prices.
Metro
Metro states that every rail station has a ramp, walkway, or elevator to the platform, and that every bus and rail line is wheelchair accessible. Buses carry two wheelchairs at a time and operators help with boarding and securement. The detail is on Metro’s accessibility guide.
The limit is the elevator. Check Metro’s service alerts before you leave, because one out-of-service elevator at a station without a backup takes that station off your map for the night. Metro will carry you by bus to the next station at no charge when that happens.
The second limit is the last train, which varies by line. Look up the last departure for your line and your station on the night you are going, then subtract the time it takes to get from your seat to the platform.
Access Services paratransit
LA County’s ADA paratransit runs county-wide. Fares are $2.75 for a trip under 20 miles and $3.50 for 20 miles or more, and personal care attendants ride free.
Two limits matter. Eligibility comes from an in-person transit evaluation rather than a diagnosis, so you cannot sign up on the night, and the details are on the eligibility page. It is also a next-day service: you book the day before you travel, not a week out and not an hour out.
Visiting rather than living here? Access takes visitors for up to 21 days in a calendar year, and the days do not have to run consecutively.
You send them ADA paratransit eligibility from your home jurisdiction, or proof of an address outside LA County plus disability verification, and processing takes about one business day. The visitors page has the submission details. Sort it out before the trip, not on arrival.
WAV rideshare
Uber WAV operates in Los Angeles, including pickups at LAX, and prices comparably to UberX. Lyft runs wheelchair rides here too.
Lyft’s limit is published, and it is the single most useful fact on this page. Its WAV help page states that wheelchair rides are available between 7 a.m. and midnight, with pickup and dropoff both inside LA County. A show that ends at 11:40 does not leave much room.
Uber WAV publishes no cutoff, but supply is the real constraint. There are not many WAV vehicles for a county this size, and the wait after midnight is not the wait at 7pm.
The last 200 feet
Whatever gets you across the city, something still has to get you from the curb to the door. Los Angeles settled a class-action lawsuit over its sidewalks and committed roughly $1.4 billion over thirty years to curb ramps and sidewalk repair, and that work is still moving through the city block by block.
So look at the block on Street View before you go. You want the curb ramp nearest the entrance, the cross slope of the sidewalk, and whether the venue’s door sits above the sidewalk.
Book the ride home before the ticket
This is the habit that changes how a night ends. Decide, in order: how you get there, where you are dropped, what time you leave, and what is still running at that time.
If the answer to the last one is nothing, you have not planned a night out. The late-hours version of this math is in plan the last hour first.
The Events & Shows page has the rest of our big-night research, and the free LA guide puts new score cards in your inbox first.
