LA's Plan For A 'Car-Free' 2028 Olympics Was Laughable At The Time And Sounds Even More Unlikely Now

In the years leading up to the 2024 Olympics, Paris wasted no time making the city more people-friendly. It added more than 600 miles of bike lanes, planted 65,000 trees, created hundreds of pedestrian plazas, invested in light rail and returned streets to the people. The same year the International Olympic Committee chose Paris to host the 2024 games, it also chose Los Angeles to host the 2028 games. Even with four years remaining, as Dwell points out, it doesn’t look like LA is going to see similar sweeping changes.

No One Wants To Bike To Work

That doesn’t mean LA didn’t have big plans at the beginning. Former LA mayor Eric Garcetti signed an agreement with Paris’s Mayor Anne Hidalgo to align their sustainability initiatives and pledged that the 2028 Olympics would be the “car-free games.” For anyone who’s spent much time in LA, that was a laughable idea. Not just because of how car-dependent the city is but also because you learn quickly that politicians love to talk a big game, only for things to fall through, run into delays or only get half-delivered.

And yet, in order to successfully pull off the Olympics, LA had to at least try something. Security concerns mean parking near the events will be severely limited, and attendees will likely have to make do without a car. Outside of a few specific areas, that’s going to be incredibly difficult to do. So in 2018, LA Metro’s board approved a plan called Twenty-Eight by ’28 — 28 transportation projects that it planned to fast-track so they would be ready for the Olympics. The city was also awarded about $900 million in federal funds to get those projects done.

And yet, years later, only a few of those projects have been completed. A few are still on track to be finished by 2028, but there’s no telling how much will actually get done in the next four years. Tellingly, city officials have since begun referring to “transit-first games” instead of “car-free games,” almost like they’re losing faith, too.

That said, it isn’t over just yet. Voters recently approved a ballot measure that directs LA officials to actually implement their own plan to install new bus and bike lanes. As City Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky put it:

We’re at a crossroads: We can either seize this moment to show the world how a city built for cars can truly become biking and walking friendly, or miss out on a transformative legacy. To me, there is only one option.

The Olympics have to serve as a catalyst for L.A. to shift from a car-centric city to a multimodal transit model for the nation, with permanent bike and bus lanes, safer intersections, and more green spaces. Previous host cities have seen lasting benefits, and with the right support, we can too.

There is, of course, so much more to this story, so head on over to Dwell and give the whole thing a read.