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Olympic Misery
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012 10:56 amI continue to fret about the onset of the Olympics, which start in 191 days.
My commute is not much fun at the best of times, and an absolute arse at others. According to an article in today’s Times, which I would link to, but you know, paywall and all that, it’s going to get far worse than I’d imagined – and that is just on the days where RMT don’t go on strike, or a signal drop on to the track somewhere.
The study suggests that the afternoon rush will start at 3.30pm with average road journeys taking more than a third longer. July 27th potentially presents the capital with the ‘perfect traffic storm’ as the day of the opening ceremony clashes with one of the busiest getaway weekends of the year as the school holidays begin.
Key predictions include a reduction in average traffic speeds from 20mph to 12mph on core routes. Journeys that usually take an hour will take an additional 12 minutes (or 15 on core routes). People using the Olympic Route Network (ORN) should, plan for an extra 20 minutes.
The morning peak will last until 11.00 and the evening rush will start earlier.
Olympics organisers maintain that the city will cope with an additional 5,000,000 visitors, with up to an additional 800,000 journeys on the busiest day. The plans rely, however, on up to a third of people taking holiday or working from home to alleviate the strain on the system.
None of this seems to account for breakdowns, signal failures or industrial action.
The test event last August led some drivers to abandon their cars in jams from Surrey to Westminster. “It remains to be seen if lessons were learnt,” then study says.
In the meantime, I can’t use my Olympics icon as it is currently inactive, along with a bunch of others, the automatic renewal of my additional icons having failed. I shall pay for my LJ when the renewal for that comes up at the end of February (repeated disruptions mean that it now renews 6 weeks later than originally scheduled), but I think I will just delete and rethink my icons. I rarely use most of them. I don’t even know until I post this if my default icon is working, so I may have to reassign the default temporarily.
My commute is not much fun at the best of times, and an absolute arse at others. According to an article in today’s Times, which I would link to, but you know, paywall and all that, it’s going to get far worse than I’d imagined – and that is just on the days where RMT don’t go on strike, or a signal drop on to the track somewhere.
The study suggests that the afternoon rush will start at 3.30pm with average road journeys taking more than a third longer. July 27th potentially presents the capital with the ‘perfect traffic storm’ as the day of the opening ceremony clashes with one of the busiest getaway weekends of the year as the school holidays begin.
Key predictions include a reduction in average traffic speeds from 20mph to 12mph on core routes. Journeys that usually take an hour will take an additional 12 minutes (or 15 on core routes). People using the Olympic Route Network (ORN) should, plan for an extra 20 minutes.
The morning peak will last until 11.00 and the evening rush will start earlier.
Olympics organisers maintain that the city will cope with an additional 5,000,000 visitors, with up to an additional 800,000 journeys on the busiest day. The plans rely, however, on up to a third of people taking holiday or working from home to alleviate the strain on the system.
None of this seems to account for breakdowns, signal failures or industrial action.
The test event last August led some drivers to abandon their cars in jams from Surrey to Westminster. “It remains to be seen if lessons were learnt,” then study says.
In the meantime, I can’t use my Olympics icon as it is currently inactive, along with a bunch of others, the automatic renewal of my additional icons having failed. I shall pay for my LJ when the renewal for that comes up at the end of February (repeated disruptions mean that it now renews 6 weeks later than originally scheduled), but I think I will just delete and rethink my icons. I rarely use most of them. I don’t even know until I post this if my default icon is working, so I may have to reassign the default temporarily.