My job for the last 6 months, has been working on my Head Offices response to the Olympics and determining how we can get around the expected disruptions. Having attended many a sh*t meeting with my lot and other Government Departments, I can safely say no one has faith in the transport network to cope. If they did, we would not be trying to reduce our presence by 50% over the 2 weeks of the Olympics.
The Beach Volleyball at Horse Guards has 4 sessions a day, each with 15,000 spectators. You could assume that, at it's worst, there will be 120,000 extra journeys just into/out of Westminster/Whitehall area. An extra 60,000 people on the streets over the day in addition to the tourists who will turn up just to be there.
It will be chaos.
shammy wrote:
It will be busy, but chaos?
Do you guys have a meeting every Winter and hold your head in your hands when you realise how many extra people will be in London in the Summer? I never see any difference when i commute in January or July but there are a million extra people in London in the Summer. Sure London will be busy this year, If a khasi like Athens managed to cope im sure London can.
A summer in London will not be anything like the Olympics and suggesting it will be the same is just naive!
No, we don't hold extra meetings for summers, but then we aren't expecting the equivilant of the population of Birmingham to descend upon us in addition to the normal tourists.
The chaos bit was referring to the area I am interested in and not the whole thing.
A summer in London will not be anything like the Olympics and suggesting it will be the same is just naive!
No, we don't hold extra meetings for summers, but then we aren't expecting the equivilant of the population of Birmingham to descend upon us in addition to the normal tourists.
No, I didnt suggest that, merely that the transport system does have big swings in terms of use in a normal year. I am just interested in the difference in very busy (which everyone who has ever been to a football match will understand) and chaos. I am also interested in how a much smaller City like Athens managed to cope, with the population of Thesolonika descending on it in addition to normal tourists.
A summer in London will not be anything like the Olympics and suggesting it will be the same is just naive!
No, we don't hold extra meetings for summers, but then we aren't expecting the equivilant of the population of Birmingham to descend upon us in addition to the normal tourists.
shammy wrote:
No, I didnt suggest that, merely that the transport system does have big swings in terms of use in a normal year. I am just interested in the difference in very busy (which everyone who has ever been to a football match will understand) and chaos. I am also interested in how a much smaller City like Athens managed to cope, with the population of Thesolonika descending on it in addition to normal tourists.
It might be that London is 4 times the size of Athens and you need a much bigger transport infrastructure to get around it. I've never been to Athens so I am not sure if you could get to all the venues they used easily or not (walking or by public transport).
Football matches (and I have been to plenty) are a few hours of excessive use once a fortnight or thereabouts. The numbers at West Ham for instance would be doubled for Horse Guards every day for a fortnight. You could probably triple or even quadruple that for the Olympic Park. I would imagine our entire attendance for the season will go through for London venues in about 2 days for the Olympics.
I did go to the Athens Olympics and it was a doddle to get around, despite there being one tube line in the whole city serving the two main Olympic venue sites. OK it helped that half of Athens clears out to the islands for the summer and parking regulations were fairly relaxed, but I can't recall queing for the trains at all, and the Olympic Lanes on the roads didn't cause too much of a problem, even though the roads in Athens are usually a nightmare.
Many Olympic events are staggered or people make a day of it, hang around to enjoy the atmosphere or visit the shops and food outlets, etc, so not everyone is arriving and departing at much the same time as at a football game or concert.
Also I doubt that there will be nearly as many normal tourists in the City, many will be put off by the high hotel and flight prices and the expected crowds, so will steer well clear, and many Brits will be at home watching the TV rather than being out for the night.
Doctors have raised concerns that Olympic VIPs could receive fast-track emergency care during the games.
Emails seen by Newsnight suggest that 25,000 people in the "Olympic Family" could expect to see a consultant within 30 minutes at University College Hospital (UCLH).
..................................
....while the rest of us wait on trolleys in a corridor.
delbert wrote:Is the Olympic park open yet? I was gonna have a mooch around but can't seem to see anything on the highly informative 2012 website.....
I was next to it last night but it is ringed by huge security barriers which I imagine will be in place until well after the games. I read somewhere that the park won't be open to the public until 2014 as that is how long it will take to finish all the conversions to all the buildings (inc. the OS for West ham ?) and reconfigure it.
delbert wrote:Is the Olympic park open yet? I was gonna have a mooch around but can't seem to see anything on the highly informative 2012 website.....
monkeyhanger wrote:
I was next to it last night but it is ringed by huge security barriers which I imagine will be in place until well after the games. I read somewhere that the park won't be open to the public until 2014 as that is how long it will take to finish all the conversions to all the buildings (inc. the OS for West ham ?) and reconfigure it.
They hope to have it open for business by July 2013.
The museum opens in 2014
Not sure if they will have tours or make it accessible until after the Olympics/2013 for security reasons. Last thing they would want is a tour of the site being an excuse to blow it up!
I just can,t get my head round the thought of multimillionaire sportsmen such as tennis players and footballers grabbing the chance to enhance their public profile by taking up places at the games,The Olympian ethos is no more.
el pato wrote:I just can,t get my head round the thought of multimillionaire sportsmen such as tennis players and footballers grabbing the chance to enhance their public profile by taking up places at the games,The Olympian ethos is no more.
I'm with you on this one. As much as I love football, the particular participants (and tennis players) are financially on a different planet to their fellow Olympians and in the headlines all year round. The Olympics for me is all about those who get up at 4:30am each day and swim 100 lengths of their pool with the dream of glory in four years time or those who have made significant personal sacrifice during their early lives to achieve the chance to participate in these games. I would struggle to believe that 'to compete in the Olympics' was high on the agenda of Ryan Giggs or Andy Murray when their respective careers began.
Coupled with the fact you will have the BBC going overboard on the football given it will feature David Beckham, who conveniently will overlook the fact he now works and lives in the US despite all his "my country" speak for which he is programmed to say by his advisors, the same advisors have no doubt told him that Olympic success is the final step towards his knighthood.
Am I the only person that thinks the whole Olympic torch relay is utterly pointless?
I thought it was meant to be a ceremonial thing that went from the location of the previous Olympics (Beijing) to the location of the current one (London), not a mixture of athletes, celebs and local plebs running around ****ing Devon with the thing?
sendô wrote:Am I the only person that thinks the whole Olympic torch relay is utterly pointless?
I thought it was meant to be a ceremonial thing that went from the location of the previous Olympics (Beijing) to the location of the current one (London), not a mixture of athletes, celebs and local plebs running around ****ing Devon with the thing?
Stu likes it apparently. It gave him the chance to get a free Coca Cola baseball cap or something.
sendô wrote:Am I the only person that thinks the whole Olympic torch relay is utterly pointless?
I thought it was meant to be a ceremonial thing that went from the location of the previous Olympics (Beijing) to the location of the current one (London), not a mixture of athletes, celebs and local plebs running around ****ing Devon with the thing?
The relay doesn't bother me, the fact that William and Drogba did a stint does. I always saw it as people who the community saw as deserving of the "honour" of carrying the torch, not footballers and pop stars who can't spell their name properly. What has Drogba got to do with Swindon (unless Di Canio is going to sign him...)?
sendô wrote:Am I the only person that thinks the whole Olympic torch relay is utterly pointless?
I thought it was meant to be a ceremonial thing that went from the location of the previous Olympics (Beijing) to the location of the current one (London), not a mixture of athletes, celebs and local plebs running around ****ing Devon with the thing?
No mate I am with you. Even the bbc are going to get sick of it before long, how much is it costing to cover the whole thing when all that makes the main station is Drogba et al?
To be honest the torch is turning into Triggers broom from fools and horses, it is the original torch just with 300 different handles and (so far) 4 different flames.
The whole thing seems designed as a sop to make people feel part of it so they won't notice when the corporates and IOC officials have all the tickets for the big events.