Picture this: rush hour in Los Angeles. Then add approximately 15 million visitors, 15,000 athletes, and venues distributed across the city of sprawl. If you’re imagining something along the lines of a Hollywood apocalypse movie, consider how things might play out differently.
With just two years to go until the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Los Angeles is preparing to operate rail lines, bus fleets, curb space, highways and airspace at sustained Olympic demand. How?
That was the focus of “Planes, Trains & Air Lanes: The LA28 Transportation Blueprint,” the second panel to take place during The Games Week at USC. The panel featured Meghna Khanna, deputy executive director of mobility corridors at LA Metro; Sam Morrissey, vice president of transportation for LA28; Anuj Gupta, director of the Santa Monica Department of Transportation; David Reich, deputy executive director of mobility strategy at Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA); and Tosha Perkins, chief partnership officer at Archer.
The conversation hosted by USC Viterbi’s Sonny Astani Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering explored the complexity of coordinating across agencies and jurisdictions, accelerating Metro expansions, integrating airport strategy with regional mobility planning, and preparing for emerging aviation systems. Panelists emphasized that delivering mobility at Olympic scale requires not only infrastructure, but governance alignment, real-time data, operational resilience and public trust. Together, these interconnected challenges reflect the central role of civil and environmental engineering in designing and operating complex, multi-scale transportation systems.
A recurring theme was legacy. LA28 is not just a 16-day event. It’s a catalyst for long-term transformation in how Los Angeles connects communities, reduces congestion and advances more sustainable, multimodal transportation.
Here are a few of the key touchpoints for an interconnected transport system – starting with the all-important puzzle of first and last mile transit:
First and last mile: implementation at street level
It’s the perennial problem for those taking public transport. You ride the bus or the metro 90% of the way – then, there’s the issue of the final leg stretch to your destination. In Los Angeles, where city streets can be sweltering and urban planning has historically been car-centric, this can be a real problem.
“When we’re building a light rail system, we work with each city to create a first-last mile plan,” said Khanna. The reference to “city” is telling. There are 88 incorporated cities in Los Angeles County, all part of the behemoth we call LA.
So, how do you connect the dots for a first-last mile plan? Within a half-mile of stations, cities identify pedestrian improvements; within three miles, bicycle infrastructure. In addition, cities contribute three percent toward station-area costs and can earn credit by implementing these improvements.
Meanwhile, specifically for LA28, Metro and host cities have identified priority corridors linking stations to venues, including dedicated bike lanes. The Games further change how those corridors operate. Security perimeters around 49 venues will restrict private vehicle access, limiting curb parking and through-traffic.
Open-street programming will positively reinforce that model. “We will create a lot of open street events during the games,” Khanna said, describing coordinated ciclovía-style activations designed to demonstrate multimodal street use as community connector.
Supplemental buses without service disruption
Rail capacity alone cannot absorb projected surges. Metro plans to deploy approximately 2,000 supplemental buses during the Games, while avoiding disruption of day-to-day service. Regular routes will continue operating; additional buses will serve Olympic-specific corridors connecting park-and-ride facilities and transit hubs to venues. Surge distribution is based on venue scheduling and anticipated arrival patterns.
Fleet logistics require separate staging infrastructure, as current maintenance depots cannot house the expanded fleet. Temporary yards are being negotiated at shopping malls and colleges with available surface parking.
Gupta noted that Santa Monica’s Big Blue Bus, which is transitioning to a fully electric fleet, will contribute retired compressed natural gas buses to the supplemental pool. “These buses have been in service in the region, so they’ll be familiar,” he said, identifying the importance of trust from the public and transport partners. “We’re eager to partner with Metro to make sure that the supplemental fleet is something that we can stand up locally and will actually serve in the Games.”
Airport logistics and airspace
International arrivals will concentrate at Los Angeles Airport (LAX), already one of the busiest hubs in the world, where airspace regulations tightly control how aircraft can enter, exit and sequence.
Recent national aviation incidents have already altered helicopter routing near LAX, and safety concerns quickly translate to operational limits. Any additional aerial capacity – such as electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft – must fit inside those limits.
Initial integration will be cautious; the airport cannot risk runway delays or congestion to accommodate new modes. Reich explained that LAWA has conducted human in the loop exercises with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to test integration scenarios. To further streamline operations, Archer is exploring tools to reduce pilot error through decision-support systems. “How can you eliminate some of that human error by potentially using language models or AI to distill that data into actual actions?” said Perkins. “That’s something we’ve been working on in the background, and we believe it’s a real opportunity. It could, frankly, save lives.”
Joining the dots
The central challenge involves ensuring that rail lines, bus networks, local streets and airspace function together under sustained global demand. Metro, LADOT, LAWA, LA28 and federal agencies operate under separate mandates, but Olympic mobility compresses their planning cycles into a single deadline. For the inhabitants of Los Angeles, accustomed to the trials of a notoriously fragmented transport system, that can only be a good thing.
Venue schedules determine transit surges. Airport arrivals influence freeway demand. Security perimeters reshape local circulation patterns. Data integration and coordinated command structures are being developed to manage these interactions in real time. For the city of sprawl this is a golden opportunity to reframe the optics of traffic-apocalypse towards something more like… flow.
On the subject of optics – the image Los Angeles presents to the world – next up we’ll be exploring the role of the media in shaping the storytelling of the Games. What will the spotlight reveal when, for two months in 2028, LA becomes a global stage?
Published on March 23rd, 2026
Last updated on March 24th, 2026