Los Angeles to host a car-free Olympic Games in 2028

LOS ANGELES (NBC, KYMA/KECY) - Can Los Angeles host a "car-free Olympic Games" in 2028? Mayor Karen Bass is confident they will, but LA will need to borrow 3,000 buses to make that happen.

Getting people out of their cars and onto public transit is an ambitious goal in LA, but it's one way LA28 will limit the carbon footprint of the Summer Games.

2028 will be LA's third Olympics, but it will also be the first time any stadium has hosted the Olympics three times True for both the Coliseum and the Rose Bowl.

By embracing historic venues, LA28 is also looking toward the future, limiting its carbon footprint, and going one step further than Paris 2024.

LA28's Head of Sustainability Becky Dale talks about hosting a climate-conscious Olympics.

"A big part of this is building on the lessons learned in Paris and being able to kind of take the next step here in LA. For me, I think about it as climate change being really an existential threat to sport. If you look at Extreme Heat, an athlete who's coming to perform on maybe the most important sporting day of their life at the Olympics, Extreme Heat could potentially compromise that performance."

Becky Dale, LA28 VP of Sustainability

When asked how sports, athletics and the Olympics can be a "force for good in the context of climate change and climate action," Dale answered:

"For us, California's environmental leadership provides a really strong foundation on which to build a sustainability program. But ultimately, I think our power is our platform, our ability to bring people together to inform and engage around sustainability. To me, that's really the unique power of the games, and we absolutely want to leverage that."

This fall, Paris 2024 will provide a report card at how well they did at meeting their climate goals, and then early next year, LA28 will provide a detailed plan of how they hope to host their own climate-conscious Olympics.