A “4-year sprint” to make it “car free” is nothing more than a Potemkin Village in my opinion. International visitors will be greatly disappointed at how terrible this country’s public transportation infrastructure
I'm not sure there's many cities in the entire world that want to host it at this point...
This is still ok in Europe, especially France, which have a culture of weeks long summer vacations, so it wasn’t as much of a disruption as timing the vacation right.
I’m not sure how well it will work for the residents of LA when US residents have no such limitation.
OTOH, LA is large and broken up enough enough that it may not be very noticeable for the residents as long as they remain in their residential areas.
Some of them did, but lots remained at least for some parts. The venues, fan zones, streets and cafés/bars/restaurants were full with people dressed in French colours.
So yeah, it’s no surprise that hardly any city wants to bother with the IOC.
It’s because they’ve done it relatively recently and efficiently, and no other city wants the hassle.
They have the 2028 slot because Boston pulled out, after half the city’s politicians revolted against the idea
LA is the only host in Olympics history to have been selected by default, a feat it has accomplished every single time it has "won" the Olympics. (for the 1932, 1984, and 2028 Olympics, LA was the only bidder).
LA is, paradoxically, the reason that cities/countries go crazy spending money on the Olympics: despite being an undesired host, LA is the only city in Olympics history to have made a profit every time it has hosted. (The profits from the 1984 games are still funding youth sports programs in the LA area today.) This is because LA has such a large athletics scene that only two or three venues needed to be built for the 1932 and 1984 Olympics, and all of these venues remained in use after the Olympics. Almost all of these venues are still around today (except for the 1984 velodrome).
That was the concern in 1984. I believe the air quality in 1984 generally was far worse, and the Olympics did fine.
All this would save lot on very many things, both in emissions and in costs.
June gloom is not smog. CA has some of the strictest emission controls since the 90s at least. Electric cars are plentiful. It’s not the 70s any longer.
Now a fire can and does happen occasionally but that is far from a given at any particular time.
The 2026 World Cup will be the first hit. People from all around the world will have to go to stadia in the middle of nowhere in seas of parking lots, without any or any good transit options for getting there. Combine with the very expensive prices of everything, local cultural expectations that will not sit well with everyone (tipping iPads for self-servicing yourself), and I personally think a lot of people will absolutely hate it, which will also cloud the Olympics' perception before they even start.