Here's what LA's "car-free games" could look like

In 2022, Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins described the 2028 Summer Olympics as an opportunity to build a "people-centered mobility system" for Los Angeles. "These car-free games will be the most inclusive in our region's history," she said, "and I can’t wait to show off our region to the world."

Since then, LA's "car-free games" have been referenced in Metro meetings, city documents, transportation conference agendas, conversations about credit ratings, and hundreds of articles — many of them skeptical about whether or not LA could pull it off.

Four years out from the games, in a city seeing worsening air pollution and a record-high number of traffic deaths, you'd think LA would be doubling down on its "car-free" commitment. Instead, there are signs that LA might be walking it back.

Some officials are now describing LA's 2028 Summer Olympics as "transit-first" games.

"We're planning to make the 2028 Olympics transit-first games," LA County Supervisor and Metro board chair Janice Hahn told Spectrum on July 18. The phrase was echoed in a press release from LA Mayor Karen Bass days later: "Los Angeles aims to host a transit-first games."

The shift in language is fairly recent, and it's not the first instance of Olympics-related goalpost-moving, of course. But it became obvious to me as I reported a new story for Dwell: "Can L.A. Really Pull Off a 'Car-Free' Olympics?"

Can L.A. Really Pull Off a “Car-Free” Olympics?

Ahead of the 2028 games, the city has set ambitious transportation goals that could forever transform how Angelenos get around.

DwellAlissa Walker

As originally described to me, the "car-free" language was always more practical than aspirational — it was intended to manage expectations for attendees that there's no parking available to them at venues, due to security perimeters. But I'd argue that describing LA's Olympics as "car-free" is both audacious and necessary. Each time it's said out loud forces LA's leaders to grapple with how they might, finally, address the urgent work of actually prioritizing the movement of people over vehicles. And there's so much work to do. When each new batch of venues drops, I spend a great deal of time poking around them on Google Street View, surveying the surrounding "car-free" conditions on the ground. Sure, as LA's leaders are always happy to point out, there are buses and trains nearby. Yes, everyone will be hypothetically encouraged to ride transit. But what those leaders haven't shown us is where they're installing all the other elements that make opting out of a car the easy and obvious choice — where are they widening sidewalks, narrowing intersections, installing protected bike lanes, carving out pedestrian plazas, and planting some damn trees?

To pivot away from "car-free" would be very unfortunate at this moment. LA officials are at the Olympics right now to ostensibly learn from Paris, where leaders used the games to accelerate a permanent, citywide shift away from cars. In part because of the way Paris has re-allocated space to walkers and bikers, car use is rapidly declining among residents. Vehicular traffic fell 50 percent from 2002 and 2022 as Parisians overwhelmingly opted for other modes of transportation. And as the games approached, Paris leaders quickly realized that even with all the changes they'd made, a "transit-first" mentality was still not enough to support the transportation capacity needed for the Olympics, Bloomberg reports:

While officials initially proposed 100% of Olympics visitors would use public transport, Collectif Vélo Île-de-France, a conglomeration of campaigners, including Paris en Selle, saw the potential for the network to be overwhelmed — and cycling as part of the solution. A little over two years ago, in May 2022, they staged their own mock torch relay, by bike, to press for change. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo credited them for what came next, saying: “The cycling charities push us when we are too slow, and they are right to do so.”

Paris was already in the midst of a bike lane building boom, of course, but within two years the city scrambled to install 37 additional miles of bike lanes connecting all the venues. There are new bike-parking stations at many popular destinations. Bike share systems beefed up their fleets with nearly 20,000 more shared bikes. This is what a "car-free" Olympics looks like. And there's absolutely no reason that LA's leaders can't figure out something similar in four years. In fact, they don't even have to figure it out; there's a proposal LA leaders can simply endorse.

For my Dwell story, I spoke with Agency Artifact's Chris Torres about the Festival Trail, a concept for a 22-mile non-vehicular, zero-emission corridor linking up many Olympic venues. (Here's how to sign up for updates.) The proposed linear public space would also connect other existing or under-construction biking, walking, and transit infrastructure scheduled to be complete by 2028. Torres has already had over 200 meetings about the concept with stakeholder groups all over LA. The biggest concern he’s heard so far is that everyone wants it to be longer — people want their neighborhood to have its own car-free connection to the trail. And that's kind of the point, he says. "This corridor is what we hope will be the first of many corridors like this in many different communities," Torres told me. "That’s the legacy opportunity here."

Now which LA officials will step up to pledge their commitment? 🔥