by Did all the planning pay off? Graham looks back at London’s transport network during the Games
Previously in this series: Part 5 – Check and check again – the transport exercises
After years of planning and preparation, it became real. For London, the Games began with the opening ceremony in the Olympic Stadium at Stratford on the evening of Friday 27 July, although Cardiff had actually given the women’s football a head-start on the 25th. It was an auspicious beginning: James Bond had clearly read the Get Ahead of the Games travel advice and made sure the Queen would avoid any crowding on the Central line.
The demands on the transport network would gradually ramp up over the first week of the Games, with the events building up day-by-day. The first real test was the Monday, with office workers back. Like many in London, my Parsons Brinckerhoff colleagues and I were now in ‘Games mode’: having worked on the travel demand management ourselves, we were practising what we had been preaching. I was re-timing my commute to be after the rush hour in both directions, and was watching with professional interest.
On that first Monday, Liverpool Street station was busy but not packed. Games Ambassadors were out in force and the distinctive magenta temporary signs were ubiquitous. The next morning there was disruption on the Liverpool Street line so I went into King’s Cross. There and next door at St Pancras, all was well. Outside, Euston Road was looking normal if not quiet. King’s Cross was busy but no worse than a normal rush hour, and the Circle line was no more than moderately busy. Reports from elsewhere confirmed that it was all working.
Wednesday was similar. King’s Cross was pretty normal, the Metropolitan line quiet, and Liverpool Street busier than a normal off-peak but not at rush-hour levels. My notes recorded the Games Ambassadors as “still out in force, not exactly besieged”. At Bedford, a colleague told me, staff had been encouraging spectators travelling to the Olympic Park to change at Farringdon for the tube to West Ham, apparently due to queues at St Pancras for the Javelin service to Stratford International. They had all decamped at St Pancras anyway. Perhaps they had planned their journeys as we had asked them to, and were sticking to their guns.
There were other issues and tweaks, of course. Two Games Family vehicles ‘got lost’ on day one. LOCOG adjusted the crowd barriers in Greenwich in response to concerns from local businesses. I have a hazy memory that my colleagues monitoring the ORN took out some restrictions that had turned out not to be needed. And sadly there was news that a cyclist had died in a collision involving a media bus.
On Thursday, I checked in on the Javelins at St Pancras: busy, but not packed. And walking back from a meeting on the other side of the river gave me a chance to look at the ORN which was working fine, complete with buses from all across the country shuttling the Games Family around. But we were not yet at the peak day. We began wondering if it was the calm before the storm. Athletics would start at the Olympic Park the next day, and our Get Ahead of the Games hotspot spreadsheets turned red at that point. I chatted with a colleague about whether that might be the perfect storm: the busiest day so far, but people with a false sense of security starting to revert to normal travel patterns.
Meanwhile, the news was reporting some complaints from West End shops and restaurants that they were losing business due to people staying away from London. Looking back with the benefit of the data, that this wasn’t really the case; background travel had reduced by only 5%. It seems more likely that people’s adjustments to their travel patterns meant they spent less time socialising, or less time in the busiest areas, or both. Either way, it was officially only a coincidence that the inescapable “plan your travel” station announcements had changed and were now framed around “enjoy London but…”.
Other news that day included GB golds in cycling and rowing. And at last there was a ‘transport chaos’ story: the Mayor of London himself had got stuck… but only on a zip wire.
The storm never came. Even as the Games hit their peak, the transport system continued to work fine. My own notes petered out with a lack of anything noteworthy. Daily hotspot advice continued in the newspapers and online. A double-page feature in the Evening Standard reported on how some quieter-than-usual roads were good news for cyclists – but still couldn’t help using the phrase ‘zil lanes’ at every opportunity.
Away from the media, the Olympics was achieving the remarkable feat of cheering London up. I saw this happiness myself. It even spread to the normally-reserved commuters. With a group of spectators one morning on the train into work, the conversation flowed and smiles beamed.
Back home in Cambridge, our best buses had been requisitioned for the duration, along with others from across the nation, to become Games Family transport. The gaps this left were filled by vehicles from other corners of the country. One toddler, clearly a transport planner in training, was delighted with the new-found variety of buses from Lincolnshire, Warwickshire and other exotic locations.
As the Games ended and the athletes travelled home, the overwhelming mood was one of success. The Evening Standard’s front page proclaimed that “London wins the gold for Olympics”. The next edition quoted an athlete who called it ‘perfect’ and ‘the best ever’. And maybe it wasn’t so bad for those West End shops and restaurants after all: page 2 reported that an ‘Olympic afterglow’ would boost the West End as visitors poured into London following the “triumphant conclusion” of the Games.
There was official thanks, and a national sigh of satisfied relief. But not for long: the Paralympics would start on 29 August, and the city and its transport system would have to do it all over again. The Paralympics would be on top of schools returning and Premier League matches…
