Could LA become a new Amsterdam for bikes?

If you’ve ever been to Los Angeles, you’ll know it’s all about the car. “It is the perfect community for runners and cycling and outdoors, yet as a generality we are hooked on our vehicles, we are hooked on the need to have speed,” Damian Kevitt, the executive director of Streets Are For Everyone Safe told the BBC.

And despite the warm weather, only a few per cent actually use their bikes to commute–and 7 per cent use transit. The sprawl and gridlock in LA is legendary, and it’s no wonder.

However, with the 2028 Olympics coming to the City of Angels, politicians are hoping to change that.

The rush to change by 2028

The Twenty-eight by ’28 initiative, launched by former Mayor Eric Garcetti, aims for the City of Los Angeles to complete 28 transportation infrastructure projects before the start of the 2028 Summer Olympics on July 14, 2028, followed by the 2028 Summer Paralympics right after. The projects, which were voted in by the majority of those in LA, include both added transit–and bike lanes. The goal is to radically alter Angelenos’ and visitors’ reliance on cars to get around the city. This is not the first time that a host city has implemented more bike lanes before a Games. Both London and Paris added miles of lanes–and were for the most part, well received. The French capital, notably, saw a sharp increase: a whopping 50 per cent from 2002 to 2022.

But not everyone who lives in the city thinks it’s feasible. “That’s a wonderful dream,” Shivon Ozinga, who lives in Burbank and disagrees with the added infrastructure, said. “I can’t imagine it happening in that short amount of time given our car culture here.”

How the Danes and the Dutch did it

When you think of some of the bike lane utopias in the world, cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen may come to mind. But both places weren’t always cycling havens. In Amsterdam, for example, every household owns almost two bikes per household, and the city is full of almost endless bike paths, parking garages for bikes, and infrastructure. In Copenhagen, more than half its residents commute by bike, a staggering figure.

But both cities weren’t always like this. It took initiatives and public and political will to affect change. Amsterdam’s transformation into a cycling haven is the result of deliberate urban planning and public advocacy.

Citizens made demands for better safety

In the mid-20th century, the city experienced a surge in car ownership, leading to…