The infamous twisted Sea-to-Sky Highway, often called the “Achilles” heel of Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Olympic bid, may be repaired by a “minimalist solution”, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) told Vancouver’s 2010 bid corp. at a seminar this week in Lausanne Switzerland.
Vancouver’s vice-president of bid development Terry Wright said the IOC doesn’t expect a new, four-lane highway to replace the existing 90-kilometre road that connects Vancouver with Whistler, where skiing and bobsled events would take place, should Vancouver win the 2010 bid.
Wright said, “if anything, they were encouraging to say that a more minimalist solution they would take quite seriously. They were clear they were not asking or demanding it has to be a four-lane solution or it has to be certain minimum standards. One of the things they were quite clear about is they fully support the idea of a solution that works for the community and works for the provincial government”.
Building extra lanes for the highway is estimated to cost about $1 billion.
The bid group presented an alternative – spending about $32 million to rent a fleet of 20 ferries to sail spectators from Vancouver through Howe Sound to Squamish, then loading them onto trains and buses for the remaining 45 kilometres to Whistler.
“Clearly we need to do some more work in helping them understand that”, said Wright.
As for the weeklong seminar in Lausanne, John Furlong, president and chief operating officer of the 2010 Bid Corp. said, “we were not sure coming over what to expect but we have been very pleased with how it’s gone. We’ve got a clearer sense of what the rules will be as we go forward”.
Vancouver 2010 had a team of 12 people at the seminar in Lausanne.
Wright said each city could send up to six delegates to the IOC congress in Mexico City in November.
Bid cities can also send delegations to the Asian Games and can attend the congresses of international sports federations, if asked.
While attending these events, the cities can talk about their bids and hand out information, but cannot set up displays or models, said Wright.
The candidate cities were instructed in detail on how to fill out their bid books right down to how to colour-code the pages in the book, said bid spokesman Sam Corea.
