Olympic Team Unveils Plan to Keep Traffic Moving in 2012

Cabbies across London are likely to shake their heads in disbelief. Commuters too. In one of the bolder claims about the 2012 Olympic games in London, the government yesterday unveiled plans for a designated road network to ensure that the 55,000 athletes, officials, media personnel and sponsors are able to move around the city freely.

About a quarter of the so-called Olympic route network will be made up of designated fast lanes exclusively reserved for Olympic traffic. Elsewhere, organisers believe a combination of highway modifications, changes to existing road regulations, traffic light management, suspension of road and utility works and the creation of a transport coordination center will be enough to keep traffic moving.

"We shouldn't underestimate the scale of the challenge. The Olympic and Paralympic Games are 20 times the size of the football World Cup," said the junior transport minister Jim Fitzpatrick. "Good transport will be vital to ensure everyone can enjoy the 2012 events, while allowing Londoners to go about their business."

After problems with congestion in Atlanta in 1996, Sydney was the first Olympic city to introduce a designated road network to ease the flow of athletes, officials, sponsors and spectators between venues, airports and accommodation.

In Beijing, a vast network of newly built six-lane highways included dedicated Olympic lanes. To combat pollution and congestion, half of all cars were banned from driving into the city on given days.

The London organisers said that following Beijing's lead would not be practical, but admitted that meeting the transport objectives would be "challenging".

"On some roads at particular times of the day, games vehicles might add another 25% to the current number of vehicles already on the road," the organisers said. "It is not practical or affordable to build new roads between venues, nor would it be acceptable to restrict large numbers of roads to the sole use of games vehicles."

The Olympic network will include roads leading to the main stadium and park in Stratford and surrounding other venues, including Greenwich Park, Horse Guards Parade and the ExCel Center. It will link the mountain bike venue at Hadleigh Farm, Essex, Wembley Stadium, and the rowing venue at Eton Dorney to central London and the athletes' village, and will also cover Weymouth, where the sailing events will take place. Spectators will be encouraged to travel on public transport, mainly 10 rail lines carrying a predicted 240,000 to the Olympic park every hour.

Paralympic champion Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson, who helped to launch the consultation, said transport could "make or break" the games. "When it works, people don't talk about it," she said. "When it doesn't work - when you have athletes missing events - that is just devastating."