IOC Coordination Commission chair waves as the first Eurostar train gets ready to depart from the Olympic Park to Central London. (K.Lason/ATR)(ATR) The transport plan for the London Olympics gets an early test: members of an IOC inspection team took a ride on a new train servicing central London and the Olympic Park in the east.
The 16-member IOC Coordination Commission rode a Eurostar train, part of the Channel Tunnel rail link, from Stratford International station on the edge of the park to St. Pancras in central London.
During the Olympics, a temporary Javelin shuttle service will operate on this route, transporting 350,000 spectators into the park every day. The High Speed 1 route to the hub of Games will take just seven minutes.
Members of the commission were the first to travel on the route, which is not expected to be in full operation until 2009. High-speed trains brought in from Japan will operate the service.
Commission chair Denis Oswald and the IOC panel smiled cheerfully for the cameras as they boarded the 3.45pm train destined for central London. As the Olympic Park site is a building zone, they wore orange construction bibs and hard hats, which bore the new 2012 logo launched last week.
Oswald and his team did not share their thoughts with media on the rail transport link or London's Olympic preparations. They had spent the opening morning of the inspection trip in a series of The Eurostar heads to St. Pancras. (K.Lason/ATR)meetings with 2012
stakeholders, hearing about legacy plans for the Games.
The IOC commission will not issue comment on 2012 Olympic preparations until the closing press conference Thursday.
Before they departed Stratford International, LOCOG chair Sebastian Coe and Hugh Sumner, director of transport at the Olympic Delivery Authority, gave brief presentations on the rail transport plans for the 2012 Games.
The London goal to be the best The view today across a swath of the Olympic Park, Canary Wharf in the distance. (K.Lason/ATR)connected Olympics ever includes a wave of costly initiatives to overhaul the city's decaying public transport network.
Sumner told reporters that $34 billion was being pumped into city-wide transport upgrades, of which $12 billion of improvements were directly related to the 2012 Olympics.
"Ten railway lines and three stations will serve the Olympic Park - a train carrying spectators will arrive every 13.8 seconds," he said.
Sumner confirmed that 28 high-speed shuttle trains from Japan would be imported for Games-time deployment. They will ferry spectators and Olympic officials on the route traveled by the IOC inspection team from central London to the park.
"These high-speed trains are incredibly important and will have the capacity to transport up to 25,000 people per hour into the Olympic Park," he said.
After the Games, the route will revert back to the Channel Tunnel rail service. The stock of Japanese trains will then be used by South Eastern Trains, a company providing services in south east London and beyond.
The IOC commission will hear more about London 2012's transport plans in meetings Wednesday. The commission will conclude its visit on June 14.
With reporting from the U.K. by Mark Bisson.
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