Service disruptions

Last week, I attended three different conferences heavy on transportation content. As one might assume, the election results came up. But with a few notable exceptions, the regime change was rarely referenced onstage. Instead, the “what now" conversations mostly happened at the cocktail mixers. As the booze flowed freely, the mindset for this decidedly technocratic crowd was not one of fear but of trepidatious optimism: that maybe, just maybe, having a narcissist-in-chief presiding over our “car-free" games could mean Donald Trump might suddenly take an interest in funding LA's public transportation.

It wasn't just happy hour chatter. A similar sentiment that's seeding social media with "Trump train" memes has taken hold: because he enjoys watching sports and understands the importance of television ratings, Trump will care deeply about our megaevent success. Paired with the requisite butt-kissing by the IOC and FIFA, could Trump's vanity even drive him to dispatch even more dollars to LA?

I posed the question to Yonah Freemark, principal research associate in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute, and one of the smartest federal transportation funding experts I know. His answer? Nope.

"Everyone fantasized about Trump in that way the first time," Freemark told me. "It never happened."

Like Trump's first term, what LA should expect to see generally is less money. "I don’t think they will vary from the script the first time which was road expansion in largely rural white areas," says Freemark. "The immediate-term outcome is that the discretionary grants from the federal government are going to be oriented away from urban areas, communities of color, and pedestrian, bike and transit projects." That means fewer grants like RAISE and Reconnecting Communities —programs which are currently funding megaevent-related projects in LA.

But with two months left, the current administration could potentially hustle some approvals through. "Biden can try to get some contracts signed for as many funding agreements as possible," says Freemark. "It's hard to claw that back." Last Thursday, Randall Winston, Mayor Karen Bass's deputy mayor for infrastructure, confirmed that officials were having meetings with the White House to discuss exactly that: "Those calls are happening now."

There's also the matter of the Inglewood people mover, which had a $1 billion federal funding agreement but is now effectively dead. (One Inglewood official told me last week the project was "recalibrating" and let's hope that's a code word for buses.) Freemark says awarded federal grant money isn't traditionally reallocated to an entirely new project, but I'm just putting it out there: maybe Secretary Pete can work some magic to make sure that money stays local.

But there's something else that's very worrying about Trump: Part Deux when it comes to infrastructure. "You're seeing the Heritage Foundation and some Trump people really wanting to expand the power of executive branch to essentially ignore the legislature," says Freemark. "The president can decide even if Congress passes this money, they just won’t fund it."

In fact, Trump's previous administration delayed Congress-approved dollars for projects that the games will rely on. LA28's repeated assurances that Trump "will not impact Olympics funding" isn't necessarily true — he already has! Money for the D line (then-Purple line) extension to Westwood, where our Olympic and Paralympic athletes will be staying, was allocated in 2018 and did not come through until 2020. That decision, by the way, was made by Trump's former transportation secretary Elaine Chao, who is now on the LA28 board of directors. What a world!

The other big concern is buses. For the summer of 2028's activities, Metro is saying we need around 2,700 extra transit buses. Local electrification advocates are pushing for 100 percent electric buses in an attempt to produce a "zero-emission" games. (We know they will not be "zero-emission" games, but we can maybe aim for all the official vehicles to be electric?) Metro, ever-pragmatic, is still aiming for that electric goal while planning for a contingency fleet of the low-emission compressed natural gas buses that make up the majority of Metro's buses now. Yes, some of these 2,700 buses can and will be borrowed from other transit agencies, but let's just say LA will likely need to manifest hundreds of new electric (and/or CNG) buses in order to make this all work. And one idea being floated is that the federal government would help Metro buy new electric buses, then distribute them to transit agencies after the games are over.

For this question, I turned to my electric bus expert John Walsh, current chief commercial officer of EO Charging. He's also former chief commercial officer of Proterra, the electric bus company that closed its LA manufacturing facility in City of Industry when it filed for bankruptcy last year. Over the last few years, the federal government has given transit agencies a lot of help to electrify their fleets. Just in 2024, Walsh told me, the Federal Transit Administration awarded $1.5 billion to transit agencies to buy 1,100 buses in 47 states through the Low or No Emission Grant program, including $77 million for electric buses and charging infrastructure for Metro. And because this was all done through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Trump is very unlikely to intervene, says Walsh. "When that bill got signed in 2021, it was a bipartisan infrastructure bill, and specifically for buses, they were able to get this agreement on both sides of the aisle," says Walsh. "Why would he get rid of a bill that got passed by his own party?"

The problem here is the pipeline. The U.S. is down to just two electric transit bus manufacturers, New Flyer and Gillig. (There is another electric bus manufacturer right here in LA County, which has historically supplied many of our local buses, but they're currently not eligible for federal grants.) In February 2024, the White House convened a roundtable of bus manufacturers and transit agency leaders — including Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins — to brainstorm solutions for how to make more electric buses, fast. Walsh is optimistic that will still happen, especially because the funding is already there. "Our backlog is big," says Walsh. "But we have plenty of money — let’s go for it."

But the topline takeaway is that, like last time, cities and states will need to step up. Luckily, LA is well-equipped for this challenge. On the same day Trump was elected in 2016, LA passed Measure M, which pumps money into local transportation projects. Which is a good thing because what LA, as a region, needs the most ahead of 2028 are simpler solutions like sidewalks, bike lanes, pedestrian plazas, urban greening, shade trees — things that don't necessarily require federal funding, just better leadership. "The money from heaven or Washington, whatever one, was never that certain," UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies deputy director Juan Matute told me at Monday's Torched Talks. "The level of political will that would be required to do the cost-effective things hasn't changed. So if people are more willing to spend political will as a result of the national election, locally, that could be a good thing."

There are a few wild cards. While electric buses are probably safe, the federal waiver that California needs to sell lower-emission cars is in jeopardy, again. We've got our "First Buddy"/"Chief Dipshit" running a new Government Efficiency department which I'm sure will get him lightning-fast "verbal approval" for new Tesla holes from the same federal agencies he's being investigated by. Don't forget Trump's proposed "Freedom Cities" served exclusively by airtaxis, with those companies surely salivating over potential deregulation that could get them off the ground by 2028. I'm not even getting into the other transportation-related stuff like how we need federal approvals to make changes to goods movement patterns at the port, which was a key part of 1984's congestion relief plan. But as I've said before, maybe that's actually why Chao is on the LA28 board: in addition to being a former transportation secretary, she is also a Chinese shipping heir.

Clearly Trump's "day one" plan of commanding the military to expel undocumented residents and homeless people from cities is a much bigger threat to LA than any potential loss of transportation funding. But the overall danger is how much Trump's policies are going to make it harder to do literally anything else. In a city that's already fiscally strained, LA's Chief Deputy Controller Rick Cole is worried about losing more resources, like Community Development Block Grants and Section 8 housing vouchers, which Bass had worked closely with the Biden administration to reform. "This will put further pressure on the City's ability to deal with homelessness and deliver vital city services, which leaves even less capacity for taking on the huge planning and operational responsibilities of an Olympics," he says. "This will force LA to make painful choices over the next four years: whether to prioritize the Olympics, or serve the needs of our four million residents. There won't be enough money or staff to do both well — or even adequately." 🔥