Pressure on for LA to deliver in 2028

MANILA, Philippines — The Olympic flag arrived under bright skies Monday in Los Angeles, where officials now have four short years to organize a Games capable of rivaling the widely praised Paris edition in a notoriously traffic-clogged metropolis.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass landed in a plane emblazoned with palm trees and the logo “LA 2028,” and crossed the tarmac holding the five-ringed banner, accompanied by several US athletes.

“We feel the pressure to make sure that our city and our region is prepared and ready,” she told reporters.

“We have the flag now. It’s on us. We got a lot of work to do Los Angeles,” Bass added.

A timely reminder of potential unique challenges came moments before her plane landed, as a 4.6-magnitude earthquake shook Los Angeles.

“Making sure that we are prepared for events like an earthquake” will be key to infrastructure plans, she said. “But also now we have climate events that we never thought about impacting our region, that we have to be prepared for as well.”

Still, the biggest challenge will inevitably be transport.

In Paris for the closing ceremony last weekend, Bass outlined plans for Los Angeles to deliver a “no-car Games.”

In a city addicted to private vehicles, where gigantic freeways criss-cross the urban sprawl and traffic jams are a daily inevitability, that pledge is ambitious.

“I’m skeptical we’ll actually achieve that, but I know we’re going to try,” said James Moore, an industrial and systems engineering professor at University of Southern California.

Los Angeles does have a subway network, but at just five-and-a-half lines and relatively infrequent service, it is tiny for the region’s 10 million residents.

Authorities plan to bring in 3,000 buses, borrowed from all over the country, and to create dedicated road lanes for them.

Public transport will receive priority over private cars, which will not be banned.

Not all Olympic sites are expected to have parking.

The last time Los Angeles hosted the Olympics, in 1984, many residents left the city, averting a traffic nightmare.