Olympic Games Lanes

has anybody actually calculated the true 'cost' the country yet of the whole games? Not just the obvious, but the lost time for those affected, the lost business, the affected business etc.

Would be interesting to know how many 10's of £mil (or more?) the country has lost indirectly/directly due to the games.

and how many £mil is the country making indirectly/directly due to the games.?

i agree with rik, the amount of jobs that have been made because of the games is unreal. from the games directly, construction, promotion and all the sponsors who have employed people. i've actually been working for samsung promoting alot of their campaigns, might see me this weekend riding around filming people for a youtube campaign.

Yea, even the Army's getting in on the gold rush

most of the olympic money is being made by the sponsors, all of whom have been given the year off paying tax, so we pretty much waived any benefit for the country from all that lovely olympic money.

the Games are a big bussines, and normally the countries as a whole make money out of it. I will be surpraise in UK dont.... but Uk has a history for fucking up with big events/constructions (Mileniun Bridge, Dome)

we will never know

^ This. Jamaica Road/Lower Road to SE10 also now stacked up every evening. I almost feel bad for those people trapped in their metal boxes.

Seems to me the whole country has spent £12bn to allow landlords to kick people out of the East End and make property more expensive in London...

The traffic really is amazingly bad- far worse than it was, due to whatever changes have been made.

Do we actually have any proper Olympic traffic running around yet?

If not, then it's going to be horrifying once we add that to the mix.

we were speaking about money....

I am really lucky, on my commute from W1 to SE6 the traffic has calmed down a lot. It must be piling up
somewhere else, but of course speeding is now a problem.

I've seen a few games cars around, quite often with polis in tow, either in pandas or on motorbikes.

I'm looking forward to all the traffic. it's the only way I can directly experience the games

there's plenty of events I'm looking forward to for this olympics actually.

5000m wait
red light jumping
rapha dressage
track* cycling (*standing)
rain deluge
wingmirror slalom
nodder boxing (of asl's)
and of course the decathlon (all of the above events in one go but on cheap piece of shit bikes)

They've changed the light sequence on Chiswick High road at one of the main junctions for some reason (not an Olympic lane or at a junction that can be used to get on one) - it's turned the whole road into a farce!

It almost looks like someone is just messing around with the switch with it flicking between red & green in a matter of seconds - so now the road has gone from a bit busy during commuter times constant stationary traffic all day.

• Change light sequences
  
• Traffic grinds to a halt
  
• Start operating Games Lanes
  
• Change light sequences
  
• Traffic improves
  
• Oh look at how wonderfully effective our games lanes are, and how much they didn't fuck with the traffic
  
• Profit
  

I went through a set of lights like that last night, they only let 3 cars through when it's normally more like 8. can't fucking remember which set it was though.

I'd been sitting 3 cars back as normally there's plenty of time to get through, and ended up having to take an amber gamble instead. took me by complete surprise.

but thinking about it taking the route from deptford -> surrey quays -> tooley street this morning I managed a no-foot down from deptford church st all the way to the junction at tower bridge and quite a few of those lights were green longer than they normally are.

would make sense they're trying to speed that section up if OKR is going to be fucked and a lot of traffic will try and go that way.

The junction of Creek Road and Norman Road just before entering Greenwich, they redid the layout of the junction and made a longer red sequence on Creek Road. Every night now is tailback to Deptford. SE will be a zoo with everyone going to see the horsies and new traffic flow through that bit of Greenwich.

I'm planning to spend the entire duration of the games in a continuous skid around the Olympic lane network (with scheduled stops for tire changes etc). Currently in training for no handed skids so I can flick the double v's as I do it.

Get in contact if you'd like to sponsor me, I'm not doing this just for fun I'm also hoping to raise some money for beer.

ja!

It almost looks like someone is just messing around with the switch with it flicking between red & green in a matter of seconds - so now the road has gone from a bit busy during commuter times constant stationary traffic all day.

Yes! I got that yesterday coming down from Streatham Hill towards Balham which is hardly a major Olympics trunk road, ffs. Approached a light that was just turning red so everybody slowed down, then as soon as the traffic had stopped there it turned green again! wtf? Everybody just sat there blinking at it for a minute because nobody really knew what to do.

Yes! I got that yesterday coming down from Streatham Hill towards Balham which is hardly a major Olympics trunk road, ffs. Approached a light that was just turning red so everybody slowed down, then as soon as the traffic had stopped there it turned green again! wtf? Everybody just sat there blinking at it for a minute because nobody really knew what to do.

I had this riding down cs7 on friday night (early sat morning, about 4am). green lights the whole way and if I hit a red before I could slow to a stop it would change back to green. total mindfuck after a few tins at a party but coupled with almost no traffic on the road it made for an awesome ride.

I bet that only for female games...

Not so sure. There are loads of conservatives.

So much fuss over these lanes. I remember when we used to just call them what they were... bus lanes! Seriously, painting a few rings in the bus lanes that aren't supposed to be used by most cars during the day time isn't exactly going to cause the traffic apocalypse