Two Years Out, LA's 'No-Car' Olympics Rides on 3,000 Borrowed Buses

The World Cup gave Metro a dress rehearsal and a talking point — but the rail map is only partly built and Washington has now zeroed out the funding request twice.

The pitch has always been audacious: a “no-car” Olympics in the city that perfected the freeway interchange. Two years out, the outline is real — no spectator parking at venues, an all-transit-and-shuttle Games, and a plan to borrow roughly 3,000 buses from agencies around the country, per AP reporting. This summer's World Cup was the dress rehearsal: the July 2 Spain–Austria match at SoFi drew nearly 50,000 rail rides and more than 30,000 shuttle rides, moved along by 15 new shuttle lines and just 200 borrowed buses — a fraction of the Olympic-scale fleet. “LA is a transit city,” Metro customer experience chief Jennifer Vides told the AP. “People really want transit.”

The rail buildout itself is a glass half full. Metro's “Twenty-eight by '28” project list has produced tangible wins — the D Line extension through Koreatown opened in May, with four more stations under construction toward UCLA's athlete village, per the AP — but LAist's tracker counted 10 of the original 28 projects slipping past the Games entirely, including the Sepulveda Valley line (now eyeing 2033–35), the C Line extension to Torrance and the Southeast Gateway Line. That's why the Games plan leans so heavily on buses rather than new track.

Which brings us to the money. Metro asked Washington for $3.2 billion — largely to fund borrowing some 2,700 buses, plus mobility hubs and a Games route network — and came up empty in the FY26 Transportation Department budget proposal, the second straight federal shutout, per The Sports Examiner. The wins landing instead are smaller-bore: $500,000 in federal funds for Metro and Metrolink Games planning announced in July, about half of it earmarked for bus-shelter shade as riders bake at exposed stops, per Spectrum News 1. The distance between $3.2 billion requested and $500,000 delivered is the number to watch between now and July 14, 2028.