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The good news that London had won its bid to host the 2012 Olympics was quickly overshadowed by last week's tragic bombings... but was even the Olympic win really "good news"? Jesse Walker says maybe not.
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|7.11.05 @ 1:52PM|#
I just want to say that, as someone who lived in London all last year, I supported the Olympic bid completely. True, Paris would probably host a more efficient and aesthetic Games, but the Olympics are the only way London will get its ass in gear and actually improve its infrastructure. The Tube hasn't increased capacity since something like 1947, and plans for a cross-town express rail system have been stalled for almost a decade. It's sad that it takes a two-week sporting event for a city to take a hard look at itself, but either way I'm happy. I just hope that Seattle make an Olympic bid soon, so maybe we can get that monorail they've been promising us since 1964. . .
|7.11.05 @ 1:59PM|#
And that's just what those freako anarchist Briton's need: a stronger state. No wonder they all cheered so much when it was announced.
|7.11.05 @ 2:08PM|#
I can't think of a more inefficient way to get that done. If it's that important to voters, then, well, the voters would make it happen. I reject the idea that the wastefulness of catering to the olympics is somehow the only way to "get things done".
Monorail! Monorail! Just like the ones in Ogdenville, North Haverbrook, and Brockway!
Hope that works out for you guys...heh...heh...heh...
|7.11.05 @ 4:13PM|#
Has anyone noticed how so many foreign competitors in the Olympics train in the United States? Shouldn't they be representing the U.S.?
|7.11.05 @ 4:32PM|#
The Tube hasn't increased capacity since something like 1947, and plans for a cross-town express rail system have been stalled for almost a decade.
NYC has that beat, of course. After tearing down the 2nd, 3rd, and 9th Avenue elevated railways (not to mention several others in the Bronx and Brooklyn), we've been waiting something like 80 years for the 2nd Avenue subway to be completed. Our trains run slower now than they did fifty years ago. And the best the Olympics were going to do for us was a useless extension to the Jets, er, Olympic Stadium on the West Side. Transit projects respond only to politics, not actual customer need. I doubt it's going to be any different in London.
|7.11.05 @ 4:36PM|#
What the heck? Nothing about the 2008 Olympics? China was throwing undesirables in jail back in the 1990s just to clean up for the IOC when it visited Beijing- China hadn't even won the bid at that point!
Now, there are riots at the site of Beijing's olympic stadium, by local farmers who have been literaly thrown out on the street and had their homes bulldozed.
You think its bad when a country that (ostensibly, at least) has a well-established rule of law wins an olympic bid, well, look at what happens with an authoritarian government wins one.
Then again, I guess no one has very high expectations of Beijing to begin with.
|7.11.05 @ 5:26PM|#
look at what happens with an authoritarian government wins one
Yeah, and it's not like they take land and give it private developers or anything.
|7.11.05 @ 5:33PM|#
Paris basically lucked out.
Jesse Walker,
Great article.
ChrisO|7.11.05 @ 5:55PM|#
Oh c'mon, look at how much good the Olympics did for Atlanta. ;)