London 2012 officials are having their share of problems organizing the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games, the latest being athletes’ transportation and construction.
The Evening Standard reports officials have had to admit it will be impossible to transport athletes around the city as quickly as planned in the original Games blueprint; and because of the global recession construction companies working on the Olympic Village could go “bust”, according to a London 2012 official.
In the bid document organizers promised to set up “Zil lanes” across London to ferry officials and competitors at high speed to their events. The priority routes will link all the key venues and will be closed to all other traffic to let users travel quickly through London.
But there are problems in achieving the target times. The Department of Transport is launching a public consultation Wednesday on the lanes to be used by 55,000 athletes and VIPs, officially called the Olympic Route Network.
Following a more detailed assessment of the routes, London 2012 officials have been forced to tell the International Olympic Committee (IOC) they were over-optimistic in their original bid document on how long journeys would take, reports the Evening Standard.
At a recent meeting they reportedly warned the IOC that athletes can now expect to spend considerably longer travelling to events and that it would be impractical, if not impossible, to meet the time frame that was initially promised.
According to the newspaper it is understood that the IOC has accepted the slower journey, but only as long as London organizers can provide concrete evidence that athletes will be able to arrive at events on time and without unexpected traffic delays.
When the routes come into effect during the Games there will be several traffic restrictions imposed, including barring some left and right turns and altering traffic lights.
Meanwhile the head of the Olympic Development Authority (ODA) John Armitt, told a British parliamentary committee Tuesday that construction companies working on the Olympic Village could go “bust” because of the global recession. He said, “the risk to companies getting into financial difficulty and perhaps going bust is a risk to us. Hopefully we can keep a reasonable eye on the state of those suppliers so if somebody is getting into difficulty we can perhaps take mitigating action to reduce the impact of that”.
Organizers have already had to reduce the size of the joint public and privately financed Olympic Village from 4,200 to 3,300 apartments because of the fall in British property prices.
DPA reports despite the reduction in the size of the project the ODA is still having difficulty raising the one billion pounds necessary and is in discussions with Australian construction company Lend Lease.
