The 2028 Los Angeles Olympics promise 17 days of world-class competition — but getting hundreds of thousands of spectators across one of America’s largest, most car-dependent cities may be the biggest event of all.
Jacob Wasserman has a master’s degree in urban planning from University of California, Los Angeles, and is a research program manager at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. At the Institute of Transportation Studies, Wasserman and his team engage in applied planning research on the transportation mobility for policy makers and apply academic research to the real world.
Last year, Wasserman participated in a symposium on the relationship between large-scale events, such as the Olympics and even Taylor Swift concerts, and transportation. As Los Angeles is the host for the 2028 Olympics, LA28 is planned to be the first “transit-first” Olympics — an initiative aimed at making transit the primary and most reliable method for athletes and spectators to travel to venues.
The Oracle sat down with Wasserman to discuss aspects of transportation for the LA28 games and whether or not a transit-first Olympics is feasible.
The city of Los Angeles is hosting the LA28 games, or the ‘first transit-first Olympics,’ according to Mayor Karen Bass. Is that even doable considering how large LA is?
[JW]: Well, it’s compared to other places around the world that have promised that. If our standard is transit-first, other places have certainly met that already. It was billed initially as a car-free games and they dialed that promise back. I will say that geometrically, not everybody can drive in their private car — there isn’t room on the roads, there isn’t room in the parking, especially because a lot of the parking lots are actually going to be closed off due to security perimeters they have to establish around the venues.
So it won’t all be active modes of transportation. There might be a lot of rides hailed through Uber and Lyft. If everybody’s going to get there, they’re going to have to use modes other than private cars.
That said, I think that throughout the games, there’s been a push to tie the games to transit improvements in particular. There were these 28×28 transportation transit projects that LA Metro was going to fund — or not just transit, transportation projects — to be done by 2028. Now, they’ve played incredibly fast and loose with that because they changed the list of 28 projects multiple times, so that they will end up completing 28 projects. It was not the initially planned 28 projects.
I do think it’s a good catalyst to create lasting legacy improvements because the ‘84 Olympics — from what I understand — they did things like build or set up bus lanes on the freeways that then they just took down immediately afterwards. There wasn’t much of a legacy in our physical infrastructure that came from that, and the promise of this Olympics is that it is going to have that. Whether that comes with more money or not, I don’t know, but that’s TBD from the Feds, but at the least it is providing a certain political impetus to say, we got to get this done and then it’s going to live on afterwards.
What form do you hope that legacy will be in?
[JW]: So the things that they’re definitely doing: They are finishing a number of transit improvements. For me, where I work, the D-line subway extension to Westwood Village, which is going to be the Olympic Village, is a huge one.
[The Los Angeles planning committee] first said it was going to be done by the World Cup. That is looking real dicey right now.
But again, it’s not uncommon for transit projects, like freeway projects, to be over time, over budget. I think they’re getting a lot of bus lanes and buses that they’re borrowing just for the two weeks. LA Metro is almost doubling the size of their bus fleet as I understand it — borrowing from other private bus providers and transit agencies across the country.
And they are going to make what’s called the Olympic Game Network, Games Network, something like that. They have to, under contract with the IOC, make routes for the officials and the athletes because you do not want a situation where you have an athlete late for your game as they were stuck in LA traffic.
Would you say that having two years to do all of this is ambitious or doable? I know you touched on how establishing these transit systems can often cost a lot more and can often take a lot more time. So, will it be happening in time for the Olympics?
[JW]: That is the question. LA has said it’s a no-build Olympics and asterisk on that, because they are building on transit, but their promise was no build for the actual venues.
Now there are going to be a lot of temporary facilities — like beach volleyball, you’ve got to set up stands. They’re also expanding the convention center, which they’re kind of saying is not necessary for the Olympics and it’s going to cost us a lot of money, but that is not even going to be done, as I understand it, by the Olympics. it’s only partly done.
In some ways, a lot of this has been in the works at least a decade ago. But in some ways, it has not been planned enough ahead of time, especially compared to peer cities. Paris had a full transportation plan in place four years ahead of time. And they actually executed — they closed a lot of streets that stayed closed and it’s permanently shifted the traffic.
Transit is way up, to this day, in Paris. Driving is down. I don’t see that kind of prep having happened here. We just announced the cultural Olympiad, which is a requirement of the Olympics — you also have to do these cultural events — whereas Paris was well on their way to almost starting it at this point.
So we’re behind in a lot of ways. I think the opaqueness of the organizing committee, it’s more of a democratic nature, is not helping things.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
[JW]: The Olympics does offer a chance to rethink some of what we think of as core assumptions. In ‘84, people were warned, ‘Do not drive, it’ll be the worst time to drive,’ and so people actually stayed at home and it never would have been harder to do remote work. Actually, traffic was way better. So, for the end of the games, people realized that and started driving.
Now with Google Maps and the internet, those scare tactics probably won’t work just because people can look up what the traffic is that day. But, that said, it exposed people to like, ‘This is what LA could be if we don’t have traffic jams.’
So for this Olympics, this is how you can get from place to place on a bus in its own lane. You’ll get to experience that for two weeks. Maybe it’ll just change people’s perceptions of their city and how they get around.
That’s my optimistic read. That’s kind of the best case scenario for what the Olympics could do for transportation. Again, I think it’s a question of, politicians are going to have the will to keep the investments that we have going after the Olympics?
