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“Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass got a bracing reality check about preparing for the Olympics from her Parisian counterpart, who warned her that 2028 is sooner than it appears.”
That’s the start of a Politico story on Tuesday, which characterizes a “Gloomy outlook in Paris” for the 2024 Games and cites low poll numbers for support of the Games, principally on security concerns and transportation restrictions that will be imposed by authorities for both security and to allow Olympic traffic to access the venues and training sites.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo met with Bass and others in the delegation and told the Los Angeles team that time, even now, is of the essence. According to City Council member Paul Krekorian:
“One message that has resonated through all our meetings: ‘Start early, start early, start early.’”
The Los Angeles delegation spent considerable time checking on the Paris response to homelessness, which Hidalgo has said her administration has not gotten under control. But in Los Angeles, this is one of the highest-profile issues confronting the City of Los Angeles, County of Los Angeles and State of California. Said Bass during the visit:
“The biggest thing that’s different is that they have a much stronger social safety net, so they have more resources to provide to people. The numbers are nowhere near where our numbers are.
“For us, just moving people around is not going to be the solution. We know that very well. We need to continue to get people housed. Fortunately, we have four years, so we really need to address our population because we could never just have our Games with the numbers of people that we have on our streets.”
A June 2023 survey for the City of Los Angeles listed 32,680 “unsheltered,” and 55,155 in the County of Los Angeles. The total for Paris, according to the story, is about 3,500.
Hidalgo, a Socialist, has been in a war of words with public officials of other parties which are in charge of the regional (Ile-de-France) transportation systems, who do not share her dim view of the situation.
But Krekorian “said there will be no parking places at any of the Games venues” and added:
“We’re going to have to acquire buses, rent buses and drivers and everything from probably all over the country to be able to do that. We hope to get the federal government to pay for this.”
Council member Katy Yaroslavsky noted Hidalgo’s determination to impose more sustainability elements in Paris, including more bike lanes:
“What excites me most about these Games and the opportunities they present for Los Angeles is really how they’ve served as a catalyst for Paris to implement sustainability goals in a really big, bold way.”
Observed: Hidalgo’s message of worry to the Los Angeles delegation underscores one of the little-appreciated divides between the reality of the Olympic Games and that of the city or region that it is held in.
The Los Angeles bid for the 2024 Games, later for 2028, was not conditioned on new transit lines or U.S. federal grants. It presented the Southern California region as it is, with more than a dozen professional sports teams, more than a hundred collegiate teams at various levels, hundreds of high schools – all with their own facilities – and an infrastructure that services 9.83 million people in Los Angeles County alone.
The Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2028 will take advantage of that infrastructure and use the facilities that today support teams like the Dodgers, Angels, Rams and Chargers, Clippers, Lakers, Ducks, King, Galaxy, LAFC and Angel City FC, UCLA, USC and many more. All the issues that Hidalgo warned about are issues today and somehow thousands of events take place in Los Angeles every year.
But homelessness, traffic, air quality and safety are permanent questions, that Hidalgo, Bass and their fellow elected officials struggle with on a daily basis. They will be present during the 2024 and 2028 Games as well and what is done about it is up to those officials and the governments they run. For Los Angeles, the solutions should be determined, funded and implemented now, not because the Games are coming, but because these are problems that need to be solved.
Veteran organizers of events like Olympic Games, Pan American Games, Universiades and so on know this and the LA28 organizers and the City of Los Angeles are engaged in a unique, long-term working relationship that really got going in 2021 with an extensive Games Agreement that commits the City and the organizing committee into a close relationship for the duration.
And in Games after Games, the public support assassins are in high dudgeon for years ahead of time over civic problems that they desperately try to tie to the Games, of which few or none are remembered after – somehow – the Games come off successfully.
In Los Angeles, this was true in 1932 and in 1984. And it will be true in 2028, but as before, there will be thousands – in fact, tens of thousands – who will be working to prepare, present and stage the Olympic and Paralympic Games to a world-class standard.
~ Rich Perelman
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