Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
TfL have massively over stated the potential for travel chaos
From just my own experience in the past couple of days on the tube and cycling around London, I think TfL have massively over-egged the potential for travel chaos and as a result, businesses are suffering. Empty restaurants in Chelsea on a Sunday at lunch time? The city is absolutely dead with none of the normal queues for lunch.
If I was a Black Cab driver, a restauranteur or even a shop owner, I would be crying. Just a prediction, there will be no boost to the UK economy from the Olympics, other than the money spent by the government on it, and we'll have more negative growth.
To those who say that TfL were dammed if they didn't, that is no excuse for what they have done. The economy is at stake and they selfishly covered their own arses at its expense. They basically said "stay away from London" and people have quite rightly taken them at their word. This was wrong. We coped with massive tube disruption after 7/7. Right, rant on behalf of London's service industry over.
Tags for Forum Posts: london2012, olympics, tfl
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by L F T Snowflake on
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For months, I have been saying that this will be like the Cornwall gold rush during the eclipse. This was I think in 2000 when businesses down there geared themselves up for masses of tourists to be in the first place to watch the eclipse. Well, the good old British weather put paid to that and the Cornish service industry got its fingers well and truly blackened.
This morning I was able to leave very late for work and get there at the normal time.
As well as the constant warnings of doom, what has not helped is that Rip Off Britain has gone into overdrive with prices being ramped up all over the place. What I do hope is that the nasty landlords who evicted settled tenants in the hope of raking in thousands renting out places next to the Olympic Park get their fingers burnt the worst.
What has been nice is that it seems that lots of Brits seem to have got tickets AND with the corporates not taking up the tickets, the extra ones can be snapped up by Brits too. One of my workmates bagged a ticket for the Basketball and I have been looking out to see what might be available on my birthday for a day out.
I think though that you are right and that the Olympics will turn out to be very good, but not in the way the organisers hoped.
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Permalink Reply by 2m9rjo39tc8a8 on
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Yes, we fell for it too. We usually spend most of our weekends in central London but have been avoiding it due to TfL's warnings. More fool us.
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Permalink Reply by Salsa on
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I agree. I was on Oxford Street on Saturday and Sunday and have never seen it so quiet! I heard many people talking about how dead the shops were. What a shame for the businesses.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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It seems unfair to lay the sole blame on Transport for London when businesses reliant on tourism have been warning for sometime about the risks. Sandie Dawe "Visit Britain" Chief Executive pretty much predicted this back in March. Reuters reported that last month some hotels which had significantly raised their prices were then seeing a drop in bookings. On the other hand, theatres which were worried about poorer advanced booking now seem to be doing good business.
Anecdotally, we have friends from outside London and from abroad who are not interested in visiting sports events and who told us they'll give August a miss this year. They may be wrong, of course. But I'm not blaming anyone for not taking the risk.
Apart from visitors, haven't the Olympic Panjandrums as well as TfL advised Londoners themselves to avoid some central areas? The picture seems to be that they want people to be able to get to and from Stratford, Wembley, Greenwich and other sports locations. But seem far less concerned about the impact on the rest of London's businesses and commuters.
Even now they are reluctant to say that things are going reasonably well in case we all resume our normal travel patterns. It's also reported that the private Zil lanes are having the expected impact on traffic congestion.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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But aren't thing going well with transport because a lot of people have changed their normal travel plans? I can't say that I've seen a drop in people where I,ve been in the west end. At 4pm on Saturday and Sunday, Lower Regent Street was packed with people as I walked up to Picadilly Circus.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Alan, someone has used a bad model or bad inputs. The economy is at stake and nobody seems to have checked their work. They were selfish, they didn't want to get the finger pointed at them if things were busy. I can tell you what restauranteurs, shoopkeepers and cab drivers would want - NO BLOODY OLYMPICS!
Gideon is expecting an Olympics bounce and we're not going to get it. This is a catastrophe, not just a mess up.
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John, I must confess to having read a performance-enhancing article in the Financial Times. Which does tend to support your view. The FT (limited subscription available free) also has an editorial about the empty seats and some interesting videos including "London’s ghost town Olympics".
On the other hand, it also quotes The Director of Games Transport at TfL who, in a comment which could have been scripted for Hugh Bonneville, said: "So far we’re happy. But we’re not getting ahead of ourselves. We’re not at the end of the day yet, and we’ve still got two weeks to go.”
Personally I blame teenagers and their irresponsible parents for taking advantage of legal downloads. Everyone with internet access or even just an ordinary telly can now watch the show, listen to the music, enjoy the fireworks and see everything close-up. Without catching a plane to London or even buying a ticket.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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I was also aware of the predictions and warnings about travel chaos in London during the Olympics.
I think this underlines that, when an extravaganza is this big, with so much potential impact on the host city, it is difficult to predict what effect it will have, on transport, the local economy, etc.
The games in their current form are just too big. When there are more teams competing (206?) than there are nations represented at the UN, this is nature's way of telling you that the games in their current form, are too big.
IMO, amongst the many so-called sports that could be culled are anything "synchronised". A large variety of human activity is synchronised, but it doesn't necessarily involve strength or endurance.
Ballet is choreographed and synchronised for longer than the time taken for gravity to pull divers down into a pool. Why not Olympic ballet, where some dancers might be as fit as gymnasts?
Disclaimer: I am not a member of The Olympic Family.
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I've got some sympathy with your argument on what consistutes a sport. Some are judged on aesthetic grounds rather than fastest, highest etc but using that criteria might rule out things like gymnastics. As for reducing the number of nations competing, wouldn't that just turn the Olympics into an event that only wealthy nations get into with those nations just appropriating athletes from countries that aren't able to compete? The disgrace around the whole Zola Budd fiasco springs to mind.
P.S. it's my rest day before anyone thinks I'm tapping away rather than getting people into their seats.
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I would certainly keep gymnastics: I understand gymnasts have probably the best all-round fitness of all athletes.
But again, they're individuals, which is what the Olympics should be about, not about teams. I say scrap all of the team sports, beginning with badminton some of whose players have recently exhibited less than the finest tradition of sportsmanship.
(if beach volley-ball, why not a wet T-shirt competition? if animals, such as horses, why not greyhound racing?)
As for wealth, the Olympics are already a massive display of wealth: there is altogether too much wealth on display (wealth that even the host nation can't easily afford, even with 50% sponsorship).
I wouldn't want to see any genuine individual athlete unable to come, if they were good enough in a real sport, no matter how small or poor a country they came from.
I'd quite like to see nationalism downplayed, including the national medals table and medals "haul", so that a gold medal winner would be Josephine Bloggs, who happens to come from Landstanova, rather than another win for Landstanova.
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