required by a consent decree to include HOV lanes and a transitway, which became the C Line. After about 20 years of planning and construction, the Harbor Transitway opened on June 26, 1996, at a cost of $498 million. Because of uncertainty on the opening date, buses would not start using the facility a few weeks later on August 1, 1996. Opening of the final one-mile elevated section from 39th Street to Adams Boulevard (including 37th Street/USC station) was delayed until July 28, 1997. The Harbor Freeway shoulder stations would open on November 18, 2000. Early operations Even before opening, Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) staff recognized that there was an opportunity to link the operation of the Harbor Transitway to the El Monte Busway, an older but operationally similar facility east of Downtown Los Angeles. During the planning stages, Metro proposed to Caltrans that the transitway be extended from its terminal at 37th Street north for a more direct connection with Downtown Los Angeles or El Monte Busway. That request was not implemented, but Caltrans did construct the transitway with stub end to create a provision for a future extension. In 1998, Metro studied the extension but found it expensive and technically challenging, and to date there have been no further efforts to extend the transitway. In 1993, Metro studied how to operate its buses on the Harbor Transitway best and settled on three proposals: continue to run service as it had before, shift to a hub-and-spoke system with a trunk route on the Harbor Transitway, or create a "dual hub" system with a trunk route that served both the Harbor Transitway and the older El Monte Busway. The study took into account that because the Harbor Transitway was a Caltrans project, no additional operating funds were provided to transit agencies in the region to operate over the new facility. Metro staff recommended the dual hub proposal, saying that it would be the most efficient and cost less to run. Ultimately, the Metro Board of Directors decided to largely continue running bus routes as they had before. Because most of the buses traveling on the Harbor Freeway served commuters' needs, service was frequent along the corridors during the weekday peak hours but infrequent during other times. Ridership on the Harbor Transitway was radically lower than expected: Caltrans had projected that 65,200 passengers would travel along the Harbor