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@ashleyisdabest
right i work in stratford 6-7 days a week and in the three months since it has opened i have not had the will or compunction to pedal my bike over to westfield, the walk is atrocious enough, no consideration for integration into the local area, it is essentially like another world, badly sign posted, confusing, overcrowded.
Main point of contention is you walk over the bridge from stratford centre at night to go to a restaurant, main entrance on the left door is shut even though you can see people inside and you have to wlk another 400-500 m in order to find an entrance.
Cycling access is a joke to the olympic site and to quote from the tickets i have of the velodrome test event, there is no cycle parking on site please lock your bike at stratford regional station and enter via westfield. What a joke, there are new racks on the one way system but they will not be adequate for the major increase in footfall come the olympics. These racks plus those four dotted around the antipodes of westfield are it. No access to the olympic site for bicycles throughout the games. Not exactly promoting cycling or sustainable transport throughout an event which is supposed to encourage both points.
Also the olympic priority lanes from what I have seen are going to turn newham into a bottleneck for through traffic, not that it already is from the consistent blocked traffic reports on bbc breakfast of a12 and a13 jams every morning. As a local resident I am peeved off to say the least by the sheer lack of cohesive planning or use of the money gained from the olypmics to improve rather than negate access to the borough. The new cycle map to the olympic site borders on hilarity.
Anyway gripe over I could go on for hours about the ridiculousness of this endeavor. In my defence I love the idea of the olympics and want it to be here I just think it was planned by numpty's, mostly I am looking forward to the velopark opening in 2013, hoorah.