Qualityworld
London - going for gold
At the close of the 28th Olympiad in Athens, London is feverishly at work preparing for its bid for the 2012 games - a decision which will be made in July next year. With public transport in London often the butt of jokes or worse, looks at the proposed changes to transport networks around London Amy Holgate and asks whether the city could viably support the 500,000 visitors expected if London wins its bid
On 6 July 2005, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will announce the host nation for the 2012 Olympic Games. The winning country will enjoy an economic boost as tourists flock to the games and tour the country on their trip of a lifetime. The city will be bestowed with a gloss of prestige and will enjoy the top class sporting facilities built for the games, for many years to come. The decision on 6 July will end months of frantic manoeuvring by the five short-listed cities - London, Paris, Madrid, Moscow and New York - to formulate their full bid book, a comprehensive document detailing all the technical aspects of their plans to host the games.
The key to a successful Olympics is the efficiency and flexibility of the city's transport network. This was where Atlanta's 1996 Olympics was criticised: these games were plagued by disastrous transport problems, with stories of athletes hitching rides to get to their venues. Conversely, the 'great gleaming' transportation system (as one Australian journalist dubbed it) at the 2000 Sydney Olympics was for many what made the games so successful. It is London's transport, and the plans for improvement therein, that will make or break its Olympic bid.
Tony Blair, has extolled London's 'outstanding technical bid', while the chair of the London 2012 bid team, Olympic gold-medallist Sebastian Coe, proclaims that: 'Our transport for the 16 days of the Olympic Games and 12 days of the Paralympic Games will be the best planned and operated transport system in the history of the Olympic movement.' It's a bold pledge: the IOC's first technical report on the short-listed cities branded London's transport system as 'obsolete'. The bid team, too, has suffered from damaging and morale-depleting media setbacks, with rumours of personnel tensions and bribe-taking.
What, then, are the facts behind all the bluster and the rumour? What would be involved in transporting hordes of visiting spectators, if London were to become the host city for the 2012 Olympics? What plans are there for improving London's 'obsolete' public transport system and what are the financial repercussions of these? And are such plans going to provide a long-lasting and useful legacy to the country after the Olympics?
The nature of the beast
The Olympic precinct would be located in the area between Stratford City and Hackney Wick, in east London, with venues positioned on either side of the Lea River and the Lea Valley Park. It is planned that Stratford train station would, with a successful bid, undergo extensive upgrading. The Lower Lea Valley Matrix Group, created to coordinate and plan the regeneration of the area, stresses that the Olympics and its site would have long-term value. The infrastructure of the site, like roads, drainage and cabling, will all remain to encourage later development. The group asserts: 'The games will provide enormous momentum… to fuel the mechanics of change.'
The moving of people - both spectators and the Olympic family - into, around and out of the capital is thus a complex task. As well as the 500,000 visitors expected to arrive in London and travelling to Stratford to watch the Olympics, the Olympic family will also consist of nearly 55,000 people. This will be made up of 11,000 athletes, 6,000 National Olympic Committee (NOC) team officials, 7,400 other officials, 17,000 members of the media and 12,000 sponsors and guests.
As Allan Gooch from Steer Davies Gleave, consultant to Olympic Transport Strategy, has conceded, transporting the Olympic family is a 'huge task'; it requires transport for a much longer period than the 16 days of the Olympics' duration. The Main Press Centre and International Broadcast Centre will be opened on 26 June, and then after the Olympics there are the 14 days of the Paralympic Games. The Olympic village will finally close on 12 September - nearly three months after it opens.
However, because the Olympics are being held during the summer, the number of passengers on public transport will be 20 per cent lower due to Londoners being away for holidays. And, as the bid team's response to the IOC's initial questionnaire points out, Olympic spectators will often be travelling in the opposite direction to the city's commuters. Overall, though, there is expected to be an extra five per cent of normal London weekday travel.
Show me the money
Commenting on the success of the Sydney Olympics, Paul Willoughby, who was director of corporate affairs for Sydney's Olympic roads and transport authority, said: 'The Sydney games had something in relation to transport that Atlanta didn't, and that is significant government involvement. This is absolutely critical. In Atlanta, the organising committee owned the transport operation but it didn't have the power - it didn't have the authority to solve problems when they occurred.'
The British government has demonstrated its support and cooperation: the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, has stated: 'We have got a written financial agreement between the mayor's office - binding all future mayors, as it binds all future governments, about who will spend what in building towards the games. Basically, for every pound Londoners put in via the council tax, the government is levering in £3 from the national lottery. And that is before you get on to looking at the - harder to quantify but equally substantial - contribution that business will make in terms of investment. Perhaps another £2 or £3 on top of that.'
Furthermore, on 20 July, it was announced that Transport for London (TfL) will have a funding package enabling it to invest almost £3bn into London's transport over the next five years. It was announced in the secretary of state for transport's white paper, in which Alistair Darling asserted that 'transport will be crucial to a successful British bid for the 2012 Olympics'.
As Jay Walder, TfL's managing director of finance and planning, observed: 'Real sioner, agrees: 'This groundbreaking agreement means that London, for the first time, has the opportunity to make long-term decisions on planning major capital projects without the fear that funding will be withdrawn in future years… Crucially, it enables us to take forward those projects which support London's bid to host the Olympics in 2012.'
The infrastructure is already in place; 20 million journeys are made on London's public transport system every day. Every day three million trips are taken on the tube, and almost six million on London's bus network. Nearly 70 per cent of the country's rail journeys - 1.8 million a day - go through London, and 160 million people use London's airports every year. Willoughby has expressed his faith in the system: 'I think local people are probably too close to it to put it into an international context… The reality is that, despite what local commuters often think, London's transport system does have a good international reputation.'
He also cites the cultural advantage London has in terms of its attitude to public transport: 'Australians are wedded to their cars. In fact they are welded to their cars. We faced a big behavioural challenge in relation to moving people for the games because of the culture in Sydney… In contrast, London does have a public transport culture. That already exists.'
So how is this infrastructure going to be improved and integrated to capacitate a temporarily increased population, much of which will be travelling from central London to Stratford in east London?
Rail
Stratford train station will be serviced by up to ten rail lines. The aim is for 240 trains an hour - one every 15 seconds - to take up to 320,000 passengers an hour into Stratford Olympic park. The channel tunnel rail link - known as the Olympic javelin service by bid organisers - will provide a high speed shuttle service from St Pancras in central London to the Olympic park at Stratford. Due to be completed in 2007, the journey will take seven minutes. This will also provide a two hour route from mainland Europe, a vital transport link for the future. The current Docklands Light Railway, a vital thread of the Olympic transport network, is to be extended to Woolwich.
Underground
'The underground is one of the principal reasons why it makes sense to hold the Olympics in London in 2012,' believes its managing director, Tim O'Toole. At present, the tube runs over 253 miles and carries one billion people a year. Over 15 years, £15bn worth of improvements are planned for the underground. During the Olympics, late night events would be accommodated, with tube hours extended. The Jubilee line, which will also service the primary Olympic venues, will see improvements, which should lead to a 45 per cent greater capacity.
The east London underground line extension has been approved recently by the government, which would complement the Stratford rail lines. This would also valuably open up the area. By incorporating new communities into the transport network, it will encourage economic regeneration and cultivate the growth of the Docklands and south east London.
Roads
There are major arterial roads that surround the Olympic park, and the A13 east-west route is to be expanded into six lanes by 2005. There are also plans to create a spiral network of lanes which will transport members of the Olympic family efficiently - in less than 30 minutes, hopes Allan Gooch - in cars, buses and coaches. Park and rides will also be introduced outside the M25 which will cater for 15,000 spectators. Tony McNulty MP, parliamentary under secretary of state for transport with responsibility for London, has stressed the dominant role the road network will play: 'London has developed sophisticated plans for the Paralympic Games as an integrated part of the overall bid. Not too many cities, for example, can boast of a 20,000 strong taxi fleet designed to carry disabled passengers.'
Artist's impression of how the completed Olympic infrastructure will look - click on the image for full-size version
Where do we go from here?
Whatever dynamic new plans there are in the pipeline for the Olympics, there is a vital economic case for London's 'obsolete' transport system to be overhauled regardless. It needs an injection of money and committed and prolonged investment - like that which has sustained Paris' state-of-the-art metro system.
As TfL London Rail points out in its study 'The case for investing in London's rail network' (January 2004): 'Time is running out. Failure could lead to an irreversible decline of London as a major world city and international finance centre. Many jobs could be lost in London and elsewhere in the UK. Tourism, which currently generates £9bn a year could also be hard hit by declining rail services, as could the leisure and entertainment industries.' A study by the Centre for Economic Business Research concludes that a failure to invest in expanding ondon's rail network will slow down London's GDP growth to below 2 per cent per year and sacrifice nearly 500,000 jobs. A flexible and integrated effort is also vital, TfL stresses, with the government, London bodies, business communities and the private sector cooperating to overhaul the services.
Whatever the results of the decision in 2005, we can be sure of one thing: the possibility of hosting 'the greatest show on earth', as Coe has dubbed it, has meant that never before has the country's gaze focused so keenly on London's famous transport network. Scrutiny, perhaps, is a good thing. Change is in the air
