Tuesday 14 June 2011

ANOTHER OLYMPIC NIGHTMARE...TRAFFIC RESTRICTIONS

The impact of road closures and traffic restrictions, which will be necessary to guarantee that “members of the Olympic family”, that is to say VIPs, athletes and media can get across London to events on time is starting to cause consternation in the English capital.

Some of the restrictions, more extensive than had been thought, will be in place from June to mid September, despite the total span of the games being only 28 days.

The disruption has been disclosed in the course of a consultation launched by Transport for London. Plans for competitors and VIPs to be trouble free on their travels to and from events will involve:

• A 108-mile Olympic route network on which stopping will be banned;

• Deliveries to businesses (or private properties) on this network taking place between midnight and 6 am;

• 56 miles of Games Lanes, reserved for the sole use of Olympic traffic. With £200 fines for motorists and cyclists who use the Games Lanes, which will be marked with a white Games symbol;

• Banning right turns and some left turns on key routes including the Embankment and the Highway, east of Tower Hill;

• Bus routes being redrawn to accommodate the restrictions and ‘unaccommodate’ the public.

Some parts of London will be cut off as a result of the traffic curbs and buses being rerouted. This is causing consternation with elected officials representing the areas worst hit by the traffic disruption both from the London parliament and the assembly.

Business owners will have to set people on to work at night to receive deliveries, and of course companies making the deliveries will have to have their drivers work at night too. This may mean having to employ extra staff (at extra cost) to cover this, as daytime deliveries will still have to be made to businesses outside of the exclusion zone, and drivers can’t work night and day.

And have they thought about people living along this route? How about people who need to have their car for whatever reason?

Of course athletes need to be at the various stadia at the right times (although I thought that the knack was to build the accommodation as near as possible to where the events will be taking place), but I’m not sure why we have to have “zil lanes” for those and such as those. Why can’t they sit in traffic jams like the rest of us? I’ve always found that leaving early works very well in these matters.


Scottish Commonwealth Games organisers take note.





Pics: (1) The Greatest tickets on Earth? Do me a favour. Anyway they all seem to be going to dignitaries. Even Tom Daley's family couldn't get swimming tickets. They're all going to see the men's beach volleyball!! (2) Britannia. No wait a minute, isn't it Boris pretending he's Britannia?

8 comments:

  1. Tris/Munguin

    The tartan shortbread tin site just gets funnier and funnier, try this one for size,

    http://www.labourhame.com/archives/390#more-390

    "Let’s be honest. The SNP never anticipated having a majority in the Scottish Parliament to enable them to call a referendum. Since they found themselves in the fortuitous (!) position to be able to do so they have been running full tilt away from it"

    "Lets be honest" when are you going to start?

    According to this site Alex Salmond is the first politician in history to have had the misfortune of winning an overall majority and wishing he did not.

    You think they will every realise why they got annihilated? (apology to Niko but I like the sound of annihilated)

    Mind you he did not mention Braveheart this time they must be slipping.

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  2. Funnily enough Dubs, I just read something that said that if you start a piece with "let's be honest", the likelihood is that you are going to be lying through your teeth!

    Just a thought.

    I suspect that people are so used to politicians lying that, when Alex says now, as he said before the election, that he will call the referendum in 3-4 years' time, that he's trying to get out of it.

    The party always thought it would win. It didn't think it would win a majority, but it certainly thought in the run up to the election that a "good|" win was on the cards.

    As for the right to call the referendum. It would be rash to make that promise hoping NOT to have to fulfil it, when the Labour Party's attitude to "bringing it on" changes by the week.

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  3. Tris

    I wonder if the biscuit tin will feature this from Maddox in the hootsmon.

    IT MAY come as a bit of a shock to some – although probably more amusement for the SNP – to learn that Scottish Labour has been forced to draft in someone from London to get the party in Scotland back on its feet.

    John Smith House in Glasgow now has a man called Ken Clark – until recently regional director of the London Labour Party – to head up its local election campaigning for next year.

    Interestingly, many senior members of Scottish Labour, its MPs and MSPs were kept in the dark about the appointment, but what is not clear is whether he was forced upon John Smith House by Labour leader Ed Miliband or not.

    Certainly, after the Holyrood election debacle, Mr Miliband was in no mood to let Scottish Labour run its own campaign again or cut out its MPs or Westminster leadership.

    Full article,

    http://news.scotsman.com/politics/David-Maddox-Scottish-Labour-must.6784509.jp

    Labours new election slogan "a big boy from London made me do it, then ran away"

    You could not make this stuff up.

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  4. Brilliant Dubs. The enemy within, as it were.

    Well, they fought the Tories, and they've fought each other, because let's face it, that's a lot easier than fighting the SNP.

    Let's see what the English Mr Clark can do with them. Not too much I suspect.

    Are no comments allowed of Mad Ox's pieces these days, or is it just that no one has bothered to comment?

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  5. Tris

    No comments allowed on Mad Ox articles saves the hootsmon sending them to the naught step.

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  6. Core Gestapo parachuted in to take over the reins from the local Lithuanian "incompetents" only to compound matters: Historical farce loined from hubris.

    Whither the Byronic anti-Ottoman freedom fighter for Greek independence and the restoration of the pre-Roman glories of the independent Greek statelets?

    Surely a shoe-in supporter - by such historical measures - of the restoration and re-vivification of the Athens of the North?

    Truth be attempted, it seems like there is a mould breaking shift of popular opinion and world view happening at home - our own "'Arab' Spring" (consult with Kurds, Catalans, Bretons, "Sudanese" et al) - up against which only spite, vitriol and outright lies are the last ("Superman" supremacist - and comprador attachments - a la Boer laager) - are the last refuges of scoundrels and opportunists of the first order and water:

    Like the schoolyard bullies, they (pidgin imperialist) "Pickee fightees know dey can win".

    Except this time, they can not.

    To Nikos: Ponder Grivas...

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  7. I guess, David, we'd have a Uk Spring... but hald the population is down the pub.

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  8. I guess that explains it then, CH. A bit sad that!

    ReplyDelete