September 5, 2012 | Posted by Shaun McCarthy
Tags: accessibilty, disabled people, Legacy, Paralympics, TFL, transport, tube
As we continue to cheer on ParalympicsGB in their superhuman effort to overhaul their record medals tally in Beijing, it is time to start applauding another slightly less obvious superhuman effort by Peter Hendy and his team at Transport for London. The doom mongers predicted disaster, London’s creaking Victorian transport system would not be able to cope with the vast numbers visiting London for the Games. It all worked well during the Olympics despite these gloomy predictions. “Ah”, said the cynics “wait until the Paralympics in September, the kids will be back at school, everybody will return to work, then the system will go into meltdown”. The theory was that everybody who was not interested in the Games stayed out of town in August but they would all return in September and the system would be unable to cope. On the Tuesday of the final week of competition this has not happened to date. My team travelled to all London venues and found the tube lines to be very busy as they often are at peak times. The Docklands Light Railway struggled a little and there were some queues but nothing like the queues of several hours that were predicted. …
August 28, 2012 | Posted by Shaun McCarthy
Tags: active travel, cycle hire scheme, cycling, LOCOG, secure cycle parking, TFL, transport
It was great to see the ODA and LOCOG promoting cycling as a way to get to the Paralympics yesterday. Gold medal winner Joanna Rowsell is helping to promote cycling as a great way to get around. Over the past five years, London has become a much more cycle friendly city with thousands of people enjoying cycling as a cheap, sustainable and healthy way to experience our great city. The addition of the bright “Boris Bikes” means that you don’t even have to own a bike to enjoy this unique pleasure. Cycling gives you the full experience of the city, all the sights, sounds and smells and is the quickest way to travel over short journeys, along with walking. Travelling by car, bus or taxi is like observing the city through a TV screen. The subterranean experience of the Tube does not give you an experience of the city at all but it remains the fastest and most efficient way to travel for longer journeys. London 2012 has made a great effort to promote cycling as a way of getting to the Games as part of the Active Travel programme. A total of 7,200 secure bike parking places have been provided, along with web-based maps …
December 1, 2011 | Posted by Jemma Percy
Tags: active travel, TFL, transport
The London 2012 Active Travel Programme was launched by LOCOG in October 2011. The Commission is pleased to see a comprehensive set of walking and cycling routes available for Londoners and visitors to use in the lead up to Games-time, during the Games and after the Games are over. We are satisfied that there are adequate plans for bike parking at the Olympic Park and that all reasonable efforts have been made to enable people to reach venues by walking and cycling wherever possible. The London 2012 Active Travel website adequately signposts people to other information sources including a map of private bike hire venues and to the Transport for London Active Travel website. The Commission has previously noted that spectators travelling to the Games will be allocated free public transport and that this principle should be extended to spectators wishing to hire cycles.[i] We have now been advised that this would be logistically very costly and therefore is not a practical solution. However, we note that the Mayor’s cycle hire scheme is already free of charge for the first 30 minutes, after an initial fee is paid for access to the scheme of £1 per day. We understand that the majority of casual users …
