The Blue Line, which runs from downtown L.A. to Long Beach, was Los Angeles' first modern rail. It has since become a microcosm of the community it serves as well as of the challenges and successes of mass transit in a metropolis where the car is king.
Long popular, it serves a working-class area that depends on mass transit to get around.
Here is a timeline of the line's highs and lows, as told through the pages of The Times:
1989: Vandals before riders