please empty your brain below

Without exception, all of the bodies charged with providing information on how the games might affect accessibility have failed. This includes the ODA, the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority, British Waterways, and the various London Boroughs, as well as TfL. Now we're gradually discovering that important towpaths and the Greenway are to be closed:
http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/olympics-cycle-routes-to-be-closed-for-months-33649/

This from the Newham guide on the GAOTG website:

"The Greenway will be closed to the public between Stratford High Street and Wick Lane. There will be no access at Victoria Gate (Wick Lane end) from 30 April and at the eastern end (by Pudding Mill Lane Station) from 18 May. Access will be restored in October 2012."

Closed May, June, July, August, September.
Ouch.

A map in the same leaflet shows the River Lea towpath closed along the entire western perimeter of the Olympic Park, from the Bow Flyover past Hackney Wick, but no dates.

They might as well jusy say "We're all fucked becaise it's going to be nightmareish busy, whereever you go".

People still have to commute to work, so unless they think that everyone is going to take three weeks off work and leave the country, IT'S JUST GOING TO BE BUSY. isn't it? Not a lot really we can do about.

Walked through Victoria tube concourse last night at 6p, and it was heaving as normal. "Can you imagine what this is going to be like during the games?" my girlfriend said. Quite.


GAOTG is a total stinker of a campaign - very little info on how it'll all affect Greenwich or Lewisham, and they still haven't been arsed to replace the Tube map with an all-lines map.

Asking around, I don't think many employers (and they're the important ones) are really switched-on to what's going to happen.

At a higher level, it also seems absurd that we're going to have an extra bank holiday this year... but tacked onto the end of the Queen's jubilee, when one or two during the Olympic period would be *very* handy (and probably cost the economy less).

I'm pretty confident the Olympic organisers have got things sorted - TfL, the government and the boroughs, increasingly less so.

Wasn't TfL relying on something like a third of normal travel to not happen? No chance of that. My partner's workplace was told that people could ask for flexible working IF their commute would be an hour longer or more.

But the data's not there, and the length of delays to that scale not available.


Hmmm... just looking at the Canada Water page and it doesn't look pretty. Still, it says I can walk to Rotherhithe instead in 9 minutes. 9 minutes to walk 500 metres? I wasn't planning on carrying anyone on my back, why do they say it will take 9 minutes?

I also think it's very poor (as someone else noted) that the "public transport" map is as yet still only the tube map. This is particularly pertinent in SE London, where there are several venues and some quite different services operating on the Southeastern railway.

My employer's games travel planning so far seems to have been an all staff email asking "do you *really* need to be in London during the Games?" Given that our department is playing a key role in keeping it all on air, I'd suggest the answer is yes.

I'm playing the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" card, and will be working on site, so my commute ought to be a 10 minute bike ride, but the news above that the Lee towpath and the Greenway are to close (at the end of this month!) is pretty depressing. Greenest Games ever, you say?

I wonder how many people will be able to work from home.

Get Ahead of the Games have still not released borough-specific information for Waltham Forest, despite it being one of the Olympic boroughs.

Reading this I have a horrible feeling that, rather than the Games' namesake ship, this event is going to end up like her sister: a fantasticly over-hyped send-off, and then it will all go horribly wrong about five days later...........

Despite repeated asking, I've not been able to get anything at all out of my company on Olympic plans. We had an email from a senior manager telling us we were only allowed 5 WFH days this year which turned out, when we challenged him on it, to be a totally arbitrary limit which he'd made up in his head which he wasn't going to enforce.

We're in the City and will be affected by the travel issues yet no-one seems to be willing to advise any kind of alternative travel plan or WFH plan. I strongly suspect it will be down to individual managers' discretion which will mean some will be awkward about it and some won't.

My situation exactly the same - we got the generic advice and the Boroughs web link - but only I knew about the more detailed TfL pages!

I can't comment on the details of this particular website or campaign but watching all this unfold from 6 000 miles away I can't help feeling there's a lot of scaremongering going on. After all three months beforehand I don't think anyone can really predict what the transport situation will be like.

My guess is that tourist numbers for people not interested in the Olympics will be down. This combined with the large number of Londoners who usually take annual leave during August anyway plus those making special arrangements may mean congestion is not as bad as people are fearing. (and Geofftech's girlfriend may not have to worry too much - though admittedly it might not be the best time for one of his legendary tube challenges!)

The information available for bus users appears to be ever worse than for tube users - there is very little information about which bus routes are likely to be affected by severe delays (or if there is I can't find it), even though I know my regular commute bus is on a road with an olympic lane. I know my bus isn't being diverted, but I'm guessing that means the other lanes will therefore be much busier and therefore buses slower.

It's also not at all obvious from the map or other sources that other 'similar' stations to the highlighted ones will be affected - the map has an orange circle round TCR but nothing at all around Holborn - but in fact they forecast Holborn will face very similar issues. Which means the map is a pretty useless guide.

Holborn's heaving at the best of times - perhaps they think it can't get any worse!











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