Flying Taxis and Olympic Chaos: A Court Reporter’s Take on Commuting to Downtown L.A.

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If you’ve ever spent three hours a day crawling through Los Angeles traffic, then hi, welcome to my life. I’m a court reporter who works mostly downtown—Stanley Mosk Courthouse, Spring Street, sometimes even further out. Every day, I leave before sunrise hoping to shave a few minutes off my commute, only to be met with the same sea of brake lights stretching from the 405 to the 110. It’s exhausting. Mentally. Physically. Spiritually.

And now? We’ve got the Olympics coming.

Don’t get me wrong—hosting the Summer Games is exciting. I remember watching L.A. pull it off in ’84 like it was a big backyard party. But 2028 is going to be a whole different beast. The city is expecting around 15 million people, and a huge chunk of that activity is going to center around downtown, which just so happens to be where our busiest courthouses live.

So, naturally, my first thought was: How in the world am I going to get to work?

Flying Taxis Might Actually Be a Thing (Yes, Really)

Here’s where things get wild: LA28, the Olympic planning committee, has partnered with a company called Archer Aviation to bring electric flying taxis to the city. I’m talking about real-deal air taxis—quiet, all-electric aircraft that can take off and land vertically (like helicopters, but sleeker and more sustainable). They’re planning to shuttle VIPs, spectators, and probably some athletes between major Olympic hubs like SoFi Stadium, Dodger Stadium, LAX, Santa Monica, and Orange County. The flights? Ten to twenty minutes. Total.

Ten. Minutes.

Imagine that for a second. You’re at home in the Valley or Long Beach, and instead of spending an hour and a half stuck behind a Metro bus on the 10, you hop into a vertiport, take a short flight, and bam—you’re at the courthouse with time to grab a coffee.

Now, I know these air taxis are being marketed toward “VIPs,” not people like me schlepping court bags and stenography equipment, but let a girl dream, okay? After all, if they want this to be the most “car-free” Olympics in L.A. history, why not throw a few seats to the unsung heroes of the legal world?

A court reporter can hope.

Olympic Traffic Will Be Brutal—Even Worse Than Now

In reality, though, most of us court staff, reporters, attorneys, and jurors will still be on the ground. And that’s where things get dicey. Between event road closures, re-routed buses, added security perimeters, and just the sheer volume of tourists flooding the city, getting to the Stanley Mosk or Spring Street courthouses might become a daily Olympic event of its own.

Can you picture it? Trying to beat rush hour only to find 1st Street closed off for an Olympic parade or some pop-up fan experience next to Grand Park. Or circling the block for 45 minutes because the Civic Center parking structure is full of TV crews. There’s already not enough parking on a regular Wednesday morning—what’s it going to be like with a million extra people downtown?

I wouldn’t be surprised if the court starts encouraging more remote appearances, especially for civil and family law matters. We’ve already gotten used to virtual depositions and remote hearings post-COVID. Maybe the Olympics will push us even further into the future. Not ideal for everything, but I’ll take a Zoom call over sitting in Olympic gridlock any day.

Will the Courthouses Even Stay Open?

That’s the other big unknown. Are we even going to be open during the peak of the Olympics?

There hasn’t been an official word yet from the Superior Court, but I wouldn’t be shocked if some courthouses cut back operations or shut down temporarily, especially if they’re close to a major venue or affected by security zones. That could mean reshuffling calendars, delaying trials, or squeezing everything into fewer available days. Either way, it’s going to be a logistical headache.

And for freelancers like me, those kinds of disruptions have a real financial impact. If my job gets canceled because we can’t get jurors in the building, or if a case gets pushed because the witness is stuck in a traffic jam outside Dodger Stadium, that’s lost income.

Silver Linings and (Maybe) Sky High Commutes

All that said, I do see a few glimmers of hope. If the city invests in better transit and tech to deal with Olympic chaos, maybe those improvements will stick around after the Games. More reliable Metro access, better traffic coordination, upgraded digital court systems—those would make a difference long-term.

And maybe—just maybe—someone in a planning meeting will say, “Hey, what if we gave a few air taxi seats to court staff who need to be downtown at 8:30 sharp?”

I’d volunteer as tribute.

Because as much as I love my job, and as much pride as I take in being the eyes and ears of the record, I’d give just about anything not to spend half my life in traffic. Flying to work? That would be a dream. And hey, if the Olympics can make flying taxis a reality, who’s to say court reporters can’t hitch a ride?

Final Thoughts From the Road (or the Sky)

The 2028 Olympics will no doubt be an incredible moment for Los Angeles, but for those of us working in the real day-to-day machinery of the city—especially in the courts—it’s going to be a major adjustment.

From air taxis to virtual hearings to dodging downtown chaos, we’re all going to have to get creative about how we work, move, and adapt. Whether I’m driving three hours or flying ten minutes, I’ll be there, steno machine in tow—hopefully with a little less gridlock and a lot more elevation.

And if anyone at Archer Aviation is reading this: consider adding a courthouse route. I know at least a hundred court workers who’d be first in line.

Published by stenoimperium

We exist to facilitate the fortifying of the Stenography profession and ensure its survival for the next hundred years! As court reporters, we've handed the relationship role with our customers, or attorneys, over to the agencies and their sales reps.  This has done a lot of damage to our industry.  It has taken away our ability to have those relationships, the ability to be humanized and valued.  We've become a replaceable commodity. Merely saying we are the “Gold Standard” tells them that we’re the best, but there are alternatives.  Who we are though, is much, much more powerful than that!  We are the Responsible Charge.  “Responsible Charge” means responsibility for the direction, control, supervision, and possession of stenographic & transcription work, as the case may be, to assure that the work product has been critically examined and evaluated for compliance with appropriate professional standards by a licensee in the profession, and by sealing and signing the documents, the professional stenographer accepts responsibility for the stenographic or transcription work, respectively, represented by the documents and that applicable stenographic and professional standards have been met.  This designation exists in other professions, such as engineering, land surveying, public water works, landscape architects, land surveyors, fire preventionists, geologists, architects, and more.  In the case of professional engineers, the engineering association adopted a Responsible Charge position statement that says, “A professional engineer is only considered to be in responsible charge of an engineering work if the professional engineer makes independent professional decisions regarding the engineering work without requiring instruction or approval from another authority and maintains control over those decisions by the professional engineer’s physical presence at the location where the engineering work is performed or by electronic communication with the individual executing the engineering work.” If we were to adopt a Responsible Charge position statement for our industry, we could start with a draft that looks something like this: "A professional court reporter, or stenographer, is only considered to be in responsible charge of court reporting work if the professional court reporter makes independent professional decisions regarding the court reporting work without requiring instruction or approval from another authority and maintains control over those decisions by the professional court reporter’s physical presence at the location where the court reporting work is performed or by electronic communication with the individual executing the court reporting work.” Shared purpose The cornerstone of a strategic narrative is a shared purpose. This shared purpose is the outcome that you and your customer are working toward together. It’s more than a value proposition of what you deliver to them. Or a mission of what you do for the world. It’s the journey that you are on with them. By having a shared purpose, the relationship shifts from consumer to co-creator. In court reporting, our mission is “to bring justice to every litigant in the U.S.”  That purpose is shared by all involved in the litigation process – judges, attorneys, everyone.  Who we are is the Responsible Charge.  How we do that is by Protecting the Record.

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