Los Angeles is home to renowned cultural institutions and top media concerns. Its streets and skylines are recognized globally, its political influence spans continents, and its ports drive world trade. L.A. has all the elements of a global city–except one: a fully developed, advanced, and integrated transportation system. New York has its extensive subway, Tokyo boasts futuristic monorails and high-speed trains, and London’s icons are those double-decker buses, but L.A.’s signature is clogged freeways and an outdated airport that doesn’t connect to rail. Doing business here is complicated by the amount of time it takes to travel from one meeting to the next–to say nothing of the time it would take to get from a conference downtown to an exhibition at the Getty Museum. What kind of transportation system does a global city require? Could new investments in public transit at last give L.A. some worldwide recognition for its mobility? LADOT General Manager Seleta Reynolds, CicLAVia Executive Director Aaron Paley, and architect Roger Sherman, co-director of cityLAB at UCLA, visit Zócalo to discuss whether making L.A. easier to navigate could raise the city’s international profile.

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