Los Angeles and London are working together to encourage innovators to find creative solutions to major transportation problems.
 
LA mayor Eric Garcetti and London mayor Sadiq Khan have announced an agreement to make London and Los Angeles Innovator Cities, enabling more collaboration to take on critical transportation issues confronting cities around the world.
 
“Los Angeles is ready to test-drive new ideas, inventions and innovations on our streets right now,” said Garcetti. “Our partnership with London is about putting the best concepts in the world onto our local roads and railways, taking steps together to reduce traffic, cut carbon emissions and build resilient cities for the future.”
 
Los Angeles and London are thriving global cities, and the success and growth of both have led to shared transportation challenges in need of creative answers, on everything from congestion and air pollution to safety issues.
 
“London and Los Angeles are two of the world’s boldest and most innovative cities, so it makes perfect sense for us to join forces with the aim of addressing some of the biggest transport challenges facing us today,” said Khan. “Working together enables us to share best practice, promote new ideas and find pioneering solutions that could be replicated in other cities around the globe.”
 
This agreement will enable the cities to work together to identify where similar problems exist and ensure that ideas developed in either city can work elsewhere in the world. This partnership will also give companies the opportunity to take part in start-up exchanges, where start-ups can pitch their ideas in both London and LA and enable both cities to tap into the best possible concepts available.
 
The collaboration taps into the growing transportation innovation ecosystem in Los Angeles, where the recent launch of Urban Movement Labs is providing private sector and community innovators with opportunities to test ideas in real urban conditions in Los Angeles.
 
Los Angeles and London hope to expand the Innovator Cities network in the months and years ahead, allowing even more communities across the globe to benefit from new ideas in the marketplace.
 
The approach will be piloted through the London FreightLab Innovation Challenge. London FreightLab is calling for innovators in the UK to come up with ideas to make freight in London safer, cleaner and more efficient. Through the agreement, the winning innovators could be given the opportunity to pitch their ideas to the city of Los Angeles and test their proposals in a completely new market.
 
“We are pleased to exchange strategies with the great city of London to support innovations to urban freight challenges,” said Port of Los Angeles executive director Gene Seroka. “We are testing more than a dozen zero and near-zero emissions projects to further reduce emissions. We look forward to sharing best practices and await the results of the London FreightLab Innovation Challenge.”
 
Michael Hurwitz, director of transport innovation at Transport for London (TfL), added: “London and Los Angeles are very different cities, but have a number of grand challenges in common, as well as a desire to partner with the best market innovators from start-ups to corporates to help solve them. By working together we want to promote ideas that have the potential to scale to cities across the world. FreightLab is our first pilot for collaboration and we encourage as many companies as possible to consider taking part.”