THE LONDON Olympics is to be used to turn people off cars and onto public transport.
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Details of the transport plan for 2012 have been revealed today by the Olympic Delivery Authority’s Transport Director Hugh Sumner, who is evangelical in his views.
“We have a very aggressive programme to make it the greenest games in modern times,” said Sumner.
“We want to leave both a hard legacy in terms of infrastructure and a living legacy in the way people think about transport and about how they travel to sports and cultural events.
“We want to accelerate the shift to public transport and cycling that we have seen in London in recent years.
As part of the plan, the initial estimate that 20 per cent of journeys to and from the main Olympic site in Stratford would be made by car have now been slashed to a fat round zero.
“There will need to be traffic controls around competition venues,” Sumner explained. “We will make it very plain to people that there isn’t going to be parking.”
Investment in public transport schemes for the Games is massive, with a new seven-minute shuttle service from St Pancras to Stratford just the icing on the cake.
Other ingredients include twice the number of buses than usual going to and through Stratford, a new Docklands Light Railway line connecting with the Olympic site and an all-paths-lead-to-Stratford approach to a new network of cycle lanes.
