CA: Ahead of the L.A. Olympics, Officials Focus On Lone Drivers

Technology improvements, better coordination and collaboration among transportation providers, and incentives in the form of cash are being deployed in various ways in Southern California to shift mobility away from single-occupancy cars to more sustainable modes.

In Rancho Cucamonga, a suburban community in San Bernardino County, Metrolink — a commuter rail line serving Southern California — operates a station not only for its trains, but also for a bus serving nearby Ontario International Airport. It also has an express bus service, known as the West Valley Connector, currently in development. In addition to these transit choices, the station will eventually accommodate a high-speed train, developed by Brightline.

"So we have all those converging at this eight-acre site," Carrie Schindler, deputy executive director of the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority, said during a panel discussion Nov. 14 at the CoMotion LA conference in downtown Los Angeles.

The transportation authority has spent the last two years studying the best way to parse the site — which includes 960 parking spaces — to best meet the multiple needs.

"We had to develop a level of trust with all of our partners, because we had to have really difficult conversations about land decisions," she said.

In its region, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority ( L.A. Metro) is juggling a number of large capital projects intended to significantly increase its service offerings. These include the Airport Metro Connector (AMC), a direct rail connection to Los Angeles International Airport, and the D Line Subway Extension Project, extending rail service into west Los Angeles. The first phase of this extension is expected to be complete next year. These are all planned to position the city for the huge crowds and moment on the world stage brought by the 2028 Summer Olympic Games, which it will host.

Ray Sosa, L.A. Metro chief planning officer, compared this level of activity to "seven Super Bowls in one week for two full weeks."

"It is a phenomenal effort," he said, in comments on the CoMotion LA panel "Integrating Mobility: The Future of Multimodal Transportation."

In addition to these highly visible capital projects, L.A. Metro is planning tech rollouts as well, including the ability for riders to access detailed real-time transportation data on their mobile devices.

With so many visitors, "we need to provide information in some of the basic ways," Sosa said, pointing to obvious solutions like easy-to-use maps.

"But also, what other modes you can access from that particular point," he said, explaining the goal is to have riders access all of this information with their mobile devices, including real-time arrival and departure information for buses and trains. "Or, the number of electric bikes that might be available for you to use."

The idea is to make shared, sustainable mobility the go-to choice for locals and visitors by making transit convenient, frequent and easy to use, he said.

The California Department of Transportation ( Caltrans) is experimenting with an incentive program to reduce the number of solo drivers and encourage more transit or other forms of shared mobility. To do this, the department has been developing a "mobility wallet" project: "So, effectively paying people to use sustainable mobility options," according to Andrew Quinn, Caltrans assistant deputy director of roadway pricing.

The state received a $7.7 million grant from the Federal Highway Administration to develop and implement a "mobility wallet" program in Los Angeles and San Diego, to help shift behavior from single-occupancy driving to transit or other options. The project creates a financial account for users, which they will use to pay for transportation, and provides funding for local transit providers to offer financial incentives to riders who choose other forms of transportation than driving alone.

Officials also plan to incorporate dynamic car pooling services, Quinn said during the panel.

Car pooling is needed in areas like the suburbs, where multimodal transportation is less of an option, making it "the most convenient and sustainable choice for people in those areas," Quinn said. "Because it's a technological implementation — it doesn't require new infrastructure — we're also hoping that it can be fairly rapid. It might be something that we can actually deploy in time for the Olympics."

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