When built, Union Station was called the "Last of the Great Railway Stations." Designed by father and son team John and Donald B. Parkinson, the landmark opened in 1939 at a time when railway service was already beginning to wane. Combining Art Deco, Spanish Colonial, and Mission Revival styles, the site has perhaps become better known for its beauty as an architectural gem—it has starred in movies such as Blade Runner—than for being a site of major transport despite its designation as the largest railroad passenger terminal in the Western United States.

However, Los Angeles' population continues to grow, more and more people are ditching cars, and a high-speed rail line is potentially on the horizon, all of which are expected to cause patronage of the station to explode by 2040. In preparation for the expected growth, LA Metro has been working on a massive master plan alongside Gruen Associates and Grimshaw Architects for the 78-year old transit hub. Visions for its future include restoring the old ticket room and Fred Harvey restaurant, adding pedestrian and bike bridges, converting the surface parking lot into a civic plaza, a $350-million track redesign, and a new grand concourse. In addition, Metro hopes to develop much of the underused land that surrounds station into 3.25 million square feet of hotels, office space, and retail. Oddly enough, the obvious idea of adding residential space around the center has yet to come up.

Thus far, pedestrian-friendly improvements to Patsaouras Plaza, Union Stations' bus plaza, have been made and construction has begun on the long-awaited pedestrian bridge that will connect the drop-off zone for Metro's Silver Line express to Patsaourus. Currently, those riders get dropped off and picked up on a weird island on Alameda, an awkward quarter mile walk away from the buses and trains at Union Station.

As Metro starts considering the next phases for their Masterplan, they have released a conceptual video for the Link Union Station project, currently in the environmental study phase. As of now, the tracks that serve both Metrolink and Amtrak dead-end at Union Station causing train congestion and slowing up the time it takes for trains to enter and exit the station. The proposed remedy calls for building run-through tracks that would enter Union Station from the North as well as adding new tracks from the south that would span the 101 freeway. Also a part of the plan is a new passenger concourse, highlighted in the video above. Currently, Metro is considering both above-the-track and at grade-passenger options for the concourse though the video offers a vision only for the former. At street level, the project is estimated to cost somewhere between $2.2 and $2.6 billion, while an above-track concourse is estimated at the slightly cheaper cost of $1.7 to $2.1 billion.