Sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on a cris-crossing concrete artery connecting freeway to freeway is a quintessential Los Angeles experience. The film La La Land immortalized this daily ritual in its opening scene almost a decade ago and this is still the reality of commuting today. Despite dealing with some of the heaviest traffic in the nation, USC's LABarometer surveys found that just 1 in 4 Angelenos used the public transit system in the past year.

Against this backdrop, the announcement by LA leadership that Angelenos will not be able to drive to the 2028 Olympics feels out of touch with the everyday experience of living in Los Angeles. For many across the city and county, public transit just isn't a viable option because transit stations are not conveniently located, people don't feel safe, and it often takes three to four times longer than driving.

What would it look like to get to the 2028 Olympic venues today using only public transit, walking, or cycling? I collected travel time data to understand which venues were most accessible by public transit and how the transit journeys compared to driving for Angelenos.

Accessibility

How much of Los Angeles can reach the venues by transit? To explore this question, I looked at the areas from which you could reach the venue within 30 mins, 1 hour, 90 mins, and 2 hours using public transit. Each of these areas are called isochrones, and the map below shows the isochrones for each venue.

Show Transit

The chart below compares the percentage of Angelenos who can reach each venue within each timeframe.

While the downtown venues are somewhat accessible, nearly half the venues can't be reached within 2 hours by transit.

This analysis is based on our current transit system. The good news is that there are a number of transit projects that are underway which are aiming to open before 2028. However, two key questions remain: will the projects actually get done on time? And will they improve the convenience, accessibility, and safety of transit enough to make a meaningful difference for Angelenos trying to get to the venues?

Transit in Los Angeles is undergoing huge improvements, but it still doesn't work for everyone. The problems of accessibility and safety are too much of a hurdle for many Angelenos to use public transit. The LABarometer surveys illustrate these challenges and reveal the dramatic disparities in convenience and safety between cars and public transit. Despite LA being notorious for its traffic, over 70% of respondents said driving is convenient for both commuting and personal trips, while fewer than 30% said the same about Metro rail and only 16% for buses. Safety perceptions show an even more pronounced divide: 74% of Angelenos feel safe while driving, while less than half feeling secure on public transit. LA's current transit system is falling significantly short of meeting passengers’ fundamental needs for efficient and secure transportation.

Convenience

How convenient - in terms of speed, ease of getting to where you are going, and parking – is it to use

Safety

How safe are you from harassment or crime while using

Source: LABarometer survey on Mobility & Sustainability (Wave 4)

The gulfs between Olympic ambitions and transit reality raises questions about how LA will transform its transportation system, and whether changes made for the Games will leave a lasting impact on the city's mobility. Indeed, one of the four objectives of the LA 2028 Transport Strategy is to change residents' transit behaviors and encourage broader use of LA's transit system "before, during, and after the Games."

There is a lot of work being done to improve our transit system before 2028, most notably the expansion of the D Line towards UCLA and multiple bus rapid transit routes. But there will also be plenty of temporary solutions in place for the Games, including dedicated Olympic lanes and shuttle services. However, these solutions are not a long-term fix for the city's transit system and are unlikely to achieve the behaviour change the Transport Strategy is seeking.

It is also concerning how priorities have shifted since the original Olympics bid back in 2014. Of the eight transportation projects originally listed in the bid that were expected to be completed by 2024, only one has been completed. Since 2018, Metro has substituted 11 of the original 28 infrastructure projects with ones deemed more achievable by 2028. In fact, three of the replacement projects were already completed when the list was revised, suggesting a focus on meeting numerical targets rather than transforming the city's transit system. This track record raises concerns about whether the remaining projects will be ready for the Games.

LA's Olympic transportation plan includes numerous temporary solutions—dedicated Olympic lanes, supplementary shuttle services, and adjusted schedules—that will likely ensure smooth operations during the Games. However, these temporary fixes mask a deeper challenge: the long-term health of LA's public transit system.

Methodology

You can explore the code for this project here on GitHub.

The goal of this analysis was to explore how accessible LA's proposed Olympic venues are by public transit. I used an isochrone API from TravelTime to identify what areas of Los Angeles could reach each venue within different time frames and used census data to estimate how many people live in those areas. To do this, I followed these steps:

1. Collect and geocode the venues
2. Generate isochrones for each venue using the TravelTime API
3. Join population to the isochrones

Collect and geocode the venues

I gathered the list of Olympic venues from the official LA 2028 website and entered the data into Google Sheets. To geocode the venues, I used the tidygeocoder package in R.

Generate the isochrones

I generated isochrones for each venue using the TravelTime API, which provides travel time data for public transit routes. I prepared API queries for each venue and timeframe (30, 60, 90, and 120 minutes) using the timetravelR package in R. I specified public transit as the travel mode, used the "fastest" routing profile, and increased the allowable walking time at the start and end of the journey from 10 to 20 minutes.

Join population data to the isochrones

I retrieved census tract population and spatial data for Los Angeles County from NHGIS. The latest data available is from 2020. If a census tract was within or touched an isochrone, I considered the population of that tract to be able to access the venue within the given timeframe. While this isn't perfect (e.g. only a small portion of the census tract might overlap with isochrone), it is a close approximation. To be more precise, one could go to the block level.