The 2012 Olympic Games that will be held in London are now only two years away. The pertinent question to ask here is; is London Ready? A number of problem areas come up when thinking about the sheer size and scale of a massive project like the Olympics. Firstly logistics; will London be able to deal with the influx of millions of people for the period when the Olympics is on? Also is London’s public transport system capable of handling that huge number of visitors? Will London be able to adequately deal with pollution levels in order to facilitate the athletes that will arrive for the games? How will the safety of the athletes be maintained? And will it actually be possible for London to get itself ready in time?
Firstly we should take a look at the logistics issue. London is a very congested city with a massive population. That number swells because of the large number of tourists that visit England’s capital every single day. If anyone has ever sat in a crowded tube on a weekend sometimes there isn’t even enough breathing room. It isn’t the best tube system in the world and the bus system on top isn’t so great either. If these two systems get overloaded with a million more passengers in the form of Olympic visitors they may reach a critical point. But London’s underground and bus systems are being revamped and enhanced for the Olympics, let’s just hope they are able to get upgraded in time.
The 2012 Olympics are supposed to be the greenest ever. With such a high level of focus of pollution and greening everything up for the event, it seems that this aspect of the equation is taken care off. London is already a pretty green city with the congestion charge and not too many cars on the roads but still the athletes that will be competing are highly sensitive to pollution levels. There was an issue at the Beijing Olympics with athletes so afraid of the pollution that a few were seen wearing mouth and nose masks at the airport. They seemed to be fine and competed just as well so the pollution levels in London might not be an issue and with the organisers putting so much influence on going green it may work out well. A lot of supplies that are coming into the city for the event are coming in by road, which isn’t very green, but there are some mavericks out there that are looking at alternative means of transporting the goods needed like for instance by rail.
Finally the city’s police will have to step up their game to ensure the safety of the athletes during the games. London isn’t the safest city in the world but at least it’s not Baghdad. So even though security will be a concern there is a feeling that the concerned authorities will do a good job. All we can do and say about the whole affair is that hopefully it will go smoothly and it will turn out to be an amazing Olympics with many world records being broken and an excellent level of competition all round.
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