Metro scrambles to find funding for massive bus fleet that is the heart of its Olympics plans

Los Angeles Times

a day ago

In a sprawling county where transit lines are sometimes miles apart, transit leaders' plans for the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics rely on a robust fleet of buses to get people to and from venues and avoid a traffic meltdown.
The plan hinges on a $2-billion ask of the Trump administration to lease 2,700 buses to join Metro's fleet of roughly 2,400, traveling on a network of designated lanes to get from venue to venue. But with roughly three years to go until opening day, the plan faces several challenges over funding and time.
The federal government has yet to respond to the city's request. And Metro's commitment to lease clean energy buses could pose supply problems and challenges around charging infrastructure. Operators would also need to be trained under state regulations and provided housing through the Games.
'Three years might seem like a lot of time to many of us, but in municipal time, three years is like the blink of an eye. That's our greatest challenge.' said Daniel Rodman, a member of the city of L.A.'s office of major events, at a recent UCLA transit forum. 'Father Time is coming.'
The Games will be scattered in places across the region including Alamitos Beach in Long Beach, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, the L.A. Coliseum and Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles and outside the county in Anaheim and all the way to northern San Diego County. Official watch parties and fan gatherings will also occur throughout the metropolis. Since these and many of the venues aren't directly accessible by rail, the bus system will be key to the city's push for 'transit first' — a motto that city leaders have adopted since Mayor Karen Bass' previous messaging around a 'car-free Olympics.'
Outside the bus system, several transit projects in the works are expected to ease some of the traffic burden, including the extension for the Metro D Line, also known as the Purple Line, which Metro has slated for completion before the Olympics, and the opening of the automated people mover train at Los Angeles International Airport, which will offer an alternative to driving to the airport. There are also proposals for water taxi use from San Pedro to Long Beach, where multiple events will be held, to offer an alternative to the Vincent Thomas and Long Beach International Gateway bridges.
The big question is whether enough people in a famously auto-bound city will be willing to take public transit. Leaders believe that tourists are likely to take advantage of the system, and hope more Angelenos will too.
'All of our international visitors know how to ride public transportation — it's second nature for our people coming from other countries,' county Supervisor and Metro board Chair Janice Hahn said at a recent UCLA forum, pointing to the Paris Olympics and the city's long use of public transit. 'It's the Angelenos that we're still trying to attract. So I'm thinking the legacy will be a good experience on a bus or a train that could translate after the Olympics to people riding Metro.'
Los Angeles leaders warned of major traffic jams ahead of the 1984 Olympics. Then-Councilmember Pat Russell advised residents to leave the city and take a vacation, and many Angelenos rented out their homes to visitors. Fears loomed that if the city couldn't nail down a transit plan, the experience would be a disaster and spectators would encounter a fate similar to the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y., where thousands of people were stranded in below-freezing temperatures after the shuttle bus system became overloaded, according to Times archival reports.
'Of all the problems we're faced with these Olympics Games, transportation is the surest and most inevitable mess unless we get the cooperation and support of people to adjust their use of their personal vehicles,' Capt. Ken Rude, the head of California Highway Patrol's Olympic planning unit, told The Times a year before the 1984 Games. Months earlier, he warned that traffic jams could be so bad that people would be forced to abandon their cars on freeways.
In the end, catastrophe was avoided. The plan 40 years ago was similar to today's — build a robust bus system to shuttle Olympics fans, athletes and leaders throughout the county.
Traffic was manageable, whether due to transit plans that relied on an additional 550 buses to assist a fleet of 2,200, temporarily turned some streets one-way and limited deliveries to certain hours, or an exodus of residents as people left the area ahead of the Games, in part due to the dire predictions of complete gridlock.
But fast-forward, Los Angeles' population has grown from nearly 8 million in 1984 to 9.7 million today, and the region is expecting millions more spectators than it did during the last Games. Estimates for the overall number of expected visitors are still vague, but planners have anticipated as many as 9 million more ticket holders than in the 1984 Olympics.
'There's a mountain to be moved and if you move it one year, it's a lot harder than in three years,' said Juane Matute, deputy director of UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. 'The buses are hard enough to get, but all of these policy and regulatory changes may be hard as well.'
Metro has received leasing commitments for roughly 650 buses so far. Vehicles aside, it will take time to get bus operators properly trained, tested and certified to operate public transit in the state, Matute said. An estimated 6,000 additional bus operators would be needed to drive people throughout the Games. Metro has said that those operators are expected to be provided through transit agencies loaning the buses.
In the latest state budget proposal, $17.6 million from the state's highway fund would go toward Olympics and Paralympics planning, including Metro's Games Route Network, which would designate a series of roads for travel by athletes, media members, officials, the International Olympics Committee, spectators and workers. But city and Metro leaders have continued to raise concerns over the funding gap, especially since the additional buses and priority lanes network in 2028 won't be a permanent fixture to Los Angeles.
Olympics planners, on the other hand, are confident that transportation will be successful.
'L.A. has invested unto itself a lot in infrastructure here and transportation infrastructure — far more than it did in '84,' LA28 Chair Casey Wasserman said after a three-day visit from the International Olympic Committee.
'We feel very confident that it'll be a different version of the success we had in '84 in terms of ingress and egress and access and experience when it comes to transportation.'
Times staff writer Thuc Nhi Nguyen contributed to this report.