Could bike lanes reshape car-crazy Los Angeles?

Los Angeles has long been considered the capital of American car culture. Can the Olympic time change?

With sunny skies nearly year-round, some say LA is an ideal place for cycling.

Damian Kevitt, executive director of Streets Are For Everyone (Safe), said: “It’s a perfect community for runners, cyclists and being outdoors, but generally we’re attached to our cars, attached to the need to have speed.” .

But until recently, cars ruled the roads, not pedestrians or cyclists.

Covering more than 460 square miles (1,200 sq km), Los Angeles is known for its endless sprawl and traffic jams.

While cities like New York and Boston embraced mass transit, it never caught on in LA—only 7% of Angelenos take transit to work. According to Neighborhood Data for Social Change, external.

While the LA weather would be the envy of any Amsterdam cyclist, there are only about 1% bikes to work with.

But with hundreds of thousands of spectators expected to arrive in the city for the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympics, something needs to be done to make commuting in the city easier.

Los Angeles adopted the “Twenty-Eight-28” transportation plan to expand mass transit options ahead of the 2017 Summer Olympics. Since then, miles and miles of new bike lanes have sprung up.

“This is long overdue,” Mr Kevitt said.

Kevitt, a cyclist who lost his leg after being hit by a car while cycling in Griffith Park in 2013, thinks that once streets are safer and bike lanes are more connected to each other, more people will commute using their own bikes or the available Metro city bikes for rent. . else.

In 2024, LA voters backed a ballot measure that would require the city to build more bike lanes and more walkable, livable places in Los Angeles.

But will car-loving Angelenos embrace bike culture? Some are actively fighting the changes, saying bike lanes only make traffic worse in the city of stars.