The mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, has pledged to make the 2028 Olympic Games car-free, an announcement that has many Californians curious as to how it will be pulled off in a city known for its public transit and gridlock traffic.
The city of Los Angeles, California is set to host the 2028 Summer Olympic Games. Recently, the mayor of LA, Karen Bass, pledged to make the event a “no-car” Olympics, an announcement that has many Californians skeptical, especially considering LA is known for its gridlock traffic and multiple public transportation systems.
Once LA was officially announced as the host for the next Summer Games, Bass spoke at a press conference and stated that parking will not be available at many sports venues, and fans will need to take public transportation in order to reach many of the sites for the Games. The 2028 Games will take place from downtown LA, to Inglewood, to Santa Monica beach, according to the Guardian.
Skeptics have compared the public transportation systems of LA to previous host cities such as Paris, London, and Tokyo, as the infrastructure in LA is dated compared to them. This also has to due with how large the city itself is compared to those previous host cities. LA city limits have a land area of 469-square-miles, while Paris is just 41-square-miles.
“People in Los Angeles like having a lot of space to operate their cars, even if it means they’re just going to be sitting in traffic in their cars,” says Juan Matute, deputy director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies.
“It’s a political challenge that the leaders of Los Angeles will need to overcome in order to make good on the promise of having a car-free Games.”
Matute also stated that while it may be a challenge, creating a seamless transportation system to get people around the Olympic sites is possible with the right planning.
Seleta Reynolds, the chief innovation officer at the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the agency that controls transit/transportation operations and infrastructure in LA, stated: “[We] are looking back to its hosting of the 1984 Games for inspiration – which were also car-free games. And at that time, the Metro and the LA region didn’t have a single line of subway or light rail.”
Reynolds also stated that within the next four years LA will be adding at least one new rail line per year between now and 2028.
“But in the meantime, we know that even with all of that rail expansion, it still won’t be enough, and we’re still going to need to take a page out of the 1984 playbook and really rely heavily on buses to move people around,” Reynolds said.
Another hurdle LA Metro needs to think about is the projected 15 million visitors that will be going to the Olympics. Visitors will not be able to come from trains, they will need to come from buses, meaning they will need to create bus-only lanes along with increased bus stops and adjusting curbsides to better accommodate visitors.
The agency will also try to build more protected biking infrastructure and improve pedestrian access to locations where they can easily get on public transportation systems. Some streets will need to be completely closed down to cars during the Games.
“Opportunities for us to showcase what’s great about Los Angeles – our neighborhoods, our culture, the kind of vibrancy that we have as a city.”
Reynolds stated that bus lanes can be created in a short amount of time. LA Metro has secured a budget of $17 billion for the projects they’re planning for the next four years to give the city and its visitors the smoothest transportation systems possible when the 2028 Games are happening.
Even with that large budget, however, they still need $3 billion to complete the projects. Reports state that the agency has a list of 28 projects they want to complete by 2028; so far only 5 have been completed.
Looking at the 1984 Olympic games for inspiration, the city recognized that many businesses adjusted their schedules to keep people off of the road. LA also limited truck deliveries to occur at night in busier parts of the city. The agency is hoping to implement those same changes in 2028.
Matute said that “after London hosted the 2012 Olympics, the infrastructure was continually used, but people’s transit habits snapped back to their previous versions within two weeks of the end of the event. Still, Los Angeles has a shot at creating a lasting shift.”
“I think people are going to say: this is the time to pull off the band-aid to make public transportation more viable. Los Angeles can move forward a decade in four years,” Matute says.
Reynolds agreed with the sentiment: “It’s an opportunity for us to have people try something different, try getting around in a different way, and have that experience be so excellent that they decide that they want to do it again and again, even after the games are over.”
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
