Archinect - News

Driverless taxis are about to hit Los Angeles. How will Waymo's impact affect the city's changing streetscape?

2022-10-25T13:55:00-04:00

The company has been mapping Los Angeles using human drivers since 2019. Next, a spokesman said, trained drivers will test out Waymo’s robot taxi service on L.A.-area highways and neighborhood thoroughfares, with runs downtown, along the Miracle Mile and in Koreatown, Santa Monica and West Hollywood.

Waymo has already eked out footholds in Phoenix and San Francisco and will need a permit from the California Public Utilities Commission to expand its West Coast operations into what it says is a now $2 billion market.

The Public Utilities hurdle and technically complicated mapping process aside, Waymo’s eventually-expanded commercial fleet could arrive in line with a host of other transportation changes that LA is enacting ahead of the 2028 Olympics, especially near Downtown. The question of whether potentially adding thousands of EVs to its clogged roads and freeways remains the ever-larger existential factor, and opponents argue their presence undermines efforts at pedestrianization and funding for micromobility alternatives central to state and city plans despite demographic factors that are also in the company's favor.

Earlier on Archinect: What it means to add 20,000 Waymo self-driving robot taxis to America's roads

"If we want to change the car culture in Los Angeles, we need ...

On the twisted development of Los Angeles' avoidable 'baked-in" freeway system

2022-06-14T11:15:00-04:00

Can you imagine a version of Los Angeles with even more highway veins pursed throughout its (formerly) Bohemian coastline, super-industrial downtown core, and crisscrossing network of foothills? The reality of what could easily have been (save for the opposition of several big-name celebrities and politicians) is being explored by the LA Times’ new editorial series called ‘‘Explaining L.A. With Patt Morrison.’

In last week’s edition, the writer took to the freeway for a delve into its post-war sources of federal funding (90% of the system here was underwritten through the Eisenhower administration’s nationwide interstate expansion effort), and potential alternatives that included multiple Parkway designs that caught on much easier in Northeast states like New Jersey, Maine, and Connecticut during the same period.

Figures like Randolph Collier and George Gordon Whitnall come into the fore to foil more practic...

Ian Volner on the changing face of Los Angeles

2021-09-07T18:21:00-04:00

The rude stop-start of the pandemic economy has meant that scads of new marquee developments—new infrastructure, new performance venues, new housing, new museums, new everything—are now hurtling toward completion almost simultaneously. Five days spent crisscrossing from the hills to the beach and back, occasionally by car but also by bus, by train, and, yes, by bike, revealed a city seized by startling, epochal changes. For Los Angeles, it has been a long time coming.

The city is starting to ramp up for a development spree spurred on by attendant social and environmental issues that will fundamentally change the urban landscape of the city in a building boom which may also herald the end of Christopher Hawthorne’s “Third Los Angeles.”

Recently published on Archinect: Reyner Banham Is Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies at 50

LA has set very ambitious goals for development during the coming decade of transition. Ian Volner gives us a scope of some of the architectural changes coming to the city here.

LAX Automated People Mover development consortium hits major milestone

2021-07-02T16:33:00-04:00

An international consortium of engineering, construction, and infrastructure development firms has begun work on Los Angeles International Airport’s (LAX) Automated People Mover (APM) project.

The team, named LAX Integrated Express Solutions (LINXS), is led by experienced public-private partnership developers and equity investors, including Fluor Enterprises, Balfour Beatty Investments, Hochtief PPP Solutions GmbH, ACS Infrastructure Development, and Bombardier Transportation. LINXS has also enlisted the services of construction engineering company Flatiron West, along with fellow ACS Group subsidiary company Dragados and American design firm HDR.

The APM project is the centerpiece of the Los Angeles World Airport’s (LAWA), the airport authority that owns and operates LAX, Landside Access Modernization Program (LAMP), a $5.5 billion project that aims to relieve congestion and enhance traveler experience at LAX. LAMP is part of a $14 billion facilities upgrade at LAX to help facili...

Will the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics truly be low-impact?

2018-07-12T16:04:00-04:00

The only profitable games in modern Olympic history, LA 1984 was a case study in public–private partnerships, corporate sponsorship, and municipal storytelling [...] It’s proof, say LA 2028 organizers, that the city can do it again: re-use the city’s wealth of existing and under-construction stadiums and athletic facilities, house athletes and the media at local universities, and host an Olympics that won’t require new publicly-funded infrastructure...

The Olympics have been promoted to cities as a vehicle for ushering in investment, attention, and urban growth. The reality, however, is often contradicting with failed developments and infrastructure left in the aftermath. As Los Angeles prepares to host the 2028 games, large questions remain on how this will impact the city with an affordable housing and a homelessness crisis.

It's official - LA will host the Olympics in 2028, Paris in 2024

2017-09-13T18:26:00-04:00

Los Angeles’ rollercoaster campaign to host the Olympics — an effort marked by early defeat and last-second negotiations — reached its conclusion Wednesday when the city was formally awarded the 2028 Summer Games. International Olympic Committee members, by a unanimous show of hands, voted their approval at a session in Lima, Peru, ending an unusual bid competition that resulted in two winners as Paris was simultaneously given the 2024 Games.

Paris and Los Angeles were officially awarded the 2024 and 2028 summer games, respectively. Both cities have previously hosted the summer olympics twice, Paris in 1900 and in 1924, and Los Angeles in 1932 and in 1984. The two cities already have some of the necessary infrastructures to host the games but the Olympics will most likely transform their built environment.