I think it has been considered, they are even talking about it in India.

That said, most of the problems you envisage visitors experiencing will occur on the return leg of the journey. It may have an adverse effect on tourism to the UK If there are many bad experiences.

If Travel-rants.com is making this a story then the press will most certainly do so. No point in covering the strides made in improving the transport infrastructure to East London (including a Eurostar stop for the Olympic Games in 2012) when there is bad news to report..

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Darren

Your right, but work started on this 2 years ago, hence the current rebuild at Heathrow airport, expansion at Stansted.There is more going on with the Olympics as well, upgraded rail lines and new trains as an example. Check out the London 2012 website under transport for more information. Or to quote Heathrow’s website “By 2012, most of our passengers will be travelling through terminals that aren’t even open today.”

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I always wonder if they also make good deals with the unions? Olympic Games, World and Euro Cup Championships, etc. seem like ideal moments for them to go on strike and get their demands met swiftly! Yet, off the top of my hat, I can’t remember such ‘hostage’ situations in recent times…

Cheers,
Max

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Oh! At Last! I have so been banging on about this for a while. It’s not just a matter of a bit of tarting up the airports – and at Heathrow, no matter what you do, if you have n square meters you may be able to use it more efficiently but you will still only have n square meters. What people should note is that all those people have to get through a tunnel then down a bus lane-ed M4 or on – what high speed rail link? And onto what? A congested ancient, creaky tube system?

We are to have lane closures all over the place and the poor people in Greenwich will be effectively house-bound for the duration. This is why the powers that be are threatening us with £5,000 fines for using the new Zil Lanes. The Olympics will spell misery for all those who use London for their work. Will the trains be cheap to help allieviate the road network? Yeah, right.

London is not suited to this kind of event. Nor, incidently is it suited to things such as the G20 summit – Her Majesty’s Grateful Government’s latest wheeze to help the economy – “I know”, sez the Supreme Leader, “Let’s invite all the main world leaders to London where the cheap flights will mean every lunatic who wants to have a pop can get here easily. Then we can have lots of riots and trouble and we can re-generate the economy by helping business by, er…. having their offices and shops ruined – Oh! and we can test out the Zil lanes as well – Just to make it more fun for the Police, let’s have a few major football matches and other events at the same time.”

There is no real thought going into this at all. The danger is that we in the UK in general and in London in particular are going to look complete idiots. When the present crisis came about, the US put/ is putting money into infrastructure projects to re-build from the bottom up (so to speak). This could have been a golden opportunity for us as well, but no, we give our scant taxpayers resources to the very people who pi***ed it up the wall in the first place.

Eurostar has come to St Pancras – but it was always going there anyway. In any event, Eurostar is designed for London, not the Olympics. The improvements to East London’s transport was long, long overdue. The only way you may be able to make the thing work, is to put another runway or two (or three, even) at Stansted, bulldoze the M11 into a 4 lane highway to the Olympics door, build some hotels for the Olympic Politburo, put in extra rail links to Stansted for the proletariat and make sure everyone only uses that side of town.

Then, London and Londoners may be left in peace to get on with their lives. Me? Iam going to emigrate for the duration.

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@Darren I worked in London close to the present London Eye for 3 years. Getting around the city is painfully slow. Londoner’s never measure distance, its meaningless, just how long it takes to get from one place to another. 30 minutes to someone like yourself or even me who have spent most of our lives in the North, means about 30 miles covered. In London this is about 5 to 10 miles, if you’re lucky. Docklands Light Railway iis a godsend but the Light means just that. It is not a full sized, full speed system .The key consideration seems to have been to keep costs as low as possible.
@Max The last time I remember Union activity close to project commissioning was on the Jubilee Line when the Electricians went on strike. £1000 a week wasn’t enough for them. In the present economic / job climate I think it is unlikely that unions will disrupt projects.
@Murray I’m glad I don’t live in London, it sounds like hell. You’re absolutely right, London is not suited for major events like the Olympics. I think one of the reasons for holding the Olympic Games in the East End was to regenerate the area around Stratford.
London desperately needs Crossrail, a project that has been on the drawing board for about 20 years. It would have been ideal for the Games if it had been built straight after the Jubilee Line, but the UK believes investment in rail infrastructure projects to be low priority compared to things like the Millennium Dome. You are correct in saying that the Eurostar was always coming to St Pancras, but the pint is that during the POlympics trains will stop at Stratford and relieve the”congested ancient, creaky tube system”.

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Darren

There are big plans with the DLR and underground, (work has already started) plus bus routes and new roads. As I said just look at the 2012 website under transport.

On the other hand as Murrey said, there is only so much run way space in the south and it is full, why we need new runways. So Leeds could well be the gateway to the Olympics I am sure your local airport is up to the task

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New runway? We do not need a new runway. What we need is a whole new airport. 2.75 runways will never be able to compete with 4 or 6 (a la Amsterdam) though that’s a bit off topic here.

Work has started but it is not for London, it is based on trying to do just enough to heave-ho people in and out of the games. Talk is all of the Startford area and, and. Thes epeople will have to get through West London and there is talk of using places such as Horseguards. One wonders if anyone has done an analysis of the what the cost of all this is going to be on London business. Olympics are fine if you have a command economy (eg China) or if you can locate all the goings on away from the normal work-of-the-day. This “thing” will take over London, lock stock and barrel and make working in and around the capital nigh on impossible, not to mention the potential damage to our regular tourist business – if they do not get this right, totally right, first time then the tourist business may benefit froom the intial hit, but the longer terma damage will be horrendous – quite apart from making us all look bozos. Personally, I would not trust the powers that be to erect a dog-kennel, let alone re-arrange a major capital city.

As I said, I am wondering about a trip to Singapore. Should be far enough away.

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