With the new school year, I’m sure many of us are excited but mourning summer’s end. A major player in many of our latest summer fun was the Paris Olympics. The Games provided a time for celebration, whether for our home countries’ wins, emergent memes like “Pommel Horse Guy” or USC’s very own Trojan athletes — who took home 15 medals. 

And while 2028 may seem far away, the Los Angeles Olympics are sure to soon hit even closer to our USC home. Unfortunately, L.A. public transit isn’t yet up for the challenge. 

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It is no surprise that L.A. has a car problem. Anyone who’s been here has likely experienced what Paul Haddad, an Angeleno author who writes about L.A. history, coins as Los Angeles’ “auto-centric infrastructure.” In the Los Angeles Daily News, his dive into the foundations of L.A.’s urban planning highlights how the area has quite literally been built to encourage automobiles — so much so that they have become integral to “L.A.’s DNA.” 

L.A.’s car-centric culture poses a significant challenge to Mayor Karen Bass’ pledge to hold a car-free Olympics in 2028. To meet this goal, the city must not only effectively grow its public transit options but also improve their safety to encourage riders’ participation with them. 

As Katharine Gammon of The Guardian puts it, although L.A. has “a large network of light rail, subway lines and buses, compared with previous host cities like Paris, London and Tokyo, its system falls far behind.”

Unsurprisingly, L.A. residents have expressed their desires for improved city mobility. Earlier in March, voters passed Measure HLA, holding the city accountable to follow its Mobility Plan 2035 by implementing new bike and bus lanes and improving safety. 

With due respect, L.A. has made progress in meeting its Mobility Plan 2035 and preparing for the 2028 Olympics. In June, the City of Los Angeles Department of Transportation announced its plans to add protected bike lanes to Hollywood Boulevard, as the Urbanize Network reported. 

Additionally, the L.A. Metro, which manages all of Los Angeles County’s public transportation services, has attempted to address safety concerns about public transportation for the Olympics by increasing law enforcement presence on their public transit. After a board vote in June, Metro is now working to develop its own transit system police force. 

Promoting safety is complicated, though — safety on public transit often reflects problems in the general community, like homelessness and drug abuse, as Genevieve Giuliano indicated to USC Price News. Metro’s safety plans may, therefore, prove insufficient. Consequently, L.A. governing bodies should concentrate on uplifting at-risk individuals from their struggles to improve communities overall and improve the public transportation experience along with them. 

Beyond developments for safety, Metro also began executing its 28 Projects by 2028 Initiative to increase public access to Olympic venues. 

The Initiative notably includes projects focusing on increasing freeway capacity for SR 57/60, adding express lanes to the I-105 and growing vehicle capacity on the I-5. These projects imply a remaining prioritization of automobiles, contradicting Mayor Bass’ goal of encouraging people to go carless for the Olympics and Metro’s goal of delivering “the cleanest Games” in U.S. transportation history. 

Metro’s plan for 2028 also heavily depends on somewhat impermanent expansions to L.A.’s bus system. Ten of the 28 initiative projects relate to changes to the bus system, and Metro aims to establish a Supplementary Bus System of utilizing temporarily borrowed buses for Olympic-related transportation.

The solution’s short-term nature and limited capacity of buses compared to transportation alternatives, such as the RER rapid transit train in Paris, inhibit L.A.’s ability to provide long-lasting and efficient public transportation for people by 2028. 

Ideally L.A. would construct high-speed rails, inspired by Japan and France as nations leading in such systems that hosted recent Olympics. However, given California’s high-speed rail, which was approved in 2008, is still struggling to even begin track construction, L.A. having a functional high-speed rail train by 2028 seems unlikely — if not impossible. 

Public transportation plans for 2028 should accordingly focus primarily on expanding the permanent infrastructure of L.A.’s train lines, rather than highways or bus projects, while accommodating nuances in maintaining safety to best support L.A.’s public transit needs both during and after the Olympics.