Research Projects
Stop the VideoResearch Projects
STATUS: In Progress
YEAR: 2026
TOPIC AREA: Public transit, land use, and urban mobility Transportation planning, policy, and finance
CENTER: PSR
Modeling Event Travel Dynamics for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics Using Large-Scale Mobility Data - Phase 1
Project Summary
Project Number: PSR-25-SP03
Funding Source: USDOT
Total Cost: $45,000
Performance Period: January 2026- June 2026
Project Description:
The 2028 Los Angeles Olympics will require innovative transportation strategies to move hundreds of thousands of travelers reliably to and from events. The challenge is that mega-events, such as the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, produce travel behaviors that differ from routine patterns and which exceed the scope of existing planning models. Traditional data sources, such as travel surveys and long-term regional transportation models, cannot capture short-term behavioral changes in response to major events. Large-scale human mobility data from smartphones, which continuously updates, now enable direct observation of how millions of people adjust their travel in and around major events in high spatial and temporal resolution, and can form the basis for forecasting models for future events. This project will leverage large-scale mobile data to build a foundation for modeling mega-event travel. The 2028 Olympics present an obvious application, and this research can inform the work of the White House Task Force on the 2028 Summer Olympics (established by Executive Order 14328). This project’s results will also inform innovations in transportation planning models well beyond the Olympics, pioneering adaptations of mobile data that with follow up work could model travel patterns from novel events such as evacuations or changes to infrastructure to accommodate safety, health, economic, or seasonal needs.
P.I. NAME & ADDRESS
Abigail HornResearch Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering
[email protected]
Major Funders
Metrans Associate Partners
