Greenwich Transport During the Olympics
Tuesday, April 24th, 2012Just been taking a (very quick) look at LOCOG’s transport plans for this summer’s events. In general, it’s nothing I didn’t expect and we, as hosts of an international sporting event must accept, but forewarned is forearmed. At the moment it’s at ‘consultation stage’ but they’ve not got much wriggle-room if there’s a problem – I suspect this is deliberate on LOCOG’s part. I’m expecting this to be railroaded through pretty quick. The one thing I would be VERY keen to know is that we will be given plenty of clear, focused information so that we can work around whatever we have to suck up.
I’m not going to reinvent the wheel by going through it all here, but on a quick perusal I note a few things we should look out for:
South Eastern claim they’ll have a max capacity of 11,000 per hour, but bad luck if you want to use Maze Hill station to travel away from London am or to London pm – trains just won’t stop in those directions in the rush hour.
There’s a whole bunch of bus alterations too, mainly locations of stops. I guess as long as it’s well-publicised (and there are notices on the affected stops so people know where to wait), this should be dealable with.
Cutty Sark DLR will be closed because of short platforms.
Residents parking zones, on the whole, will be as usual, with extended hours. I guess businesses that have customers parking outside will have to deal with it.
One thing that will annoy some residents is a list of parking suspensions on various streets around the park who will lose their resident status to allow sundry coach parking/ set down / spectator walking routes/ taxis/ ‘venue operations/ one way systems and ‘games family’ parking (which includes the notorious ‘marketing partners’ – but then I’m sure Park Row residents will be only too delighted to give up their parking spot for the CEO of MacDonalds…) I wonder if anyone will have the guts to dock their residents’ parking badge payment on a pro-rata basis…
Times of controlled parking zones where residents bays are not suspended will be standardised – 08.30 – 19.00 during the games (something I hope will not become a regular feature)
Similar restrictions will be imposed on the Isle of Dogs so that spectators will not be able to park on the other side and walk across.
I won’t go into road closures – you can find them on the document.
All in all, it’s generally reasonable stuff. We always knew this bit would be unpleasant and frankly, there is no way around some traffic disruption.
But I repeat – we MUST be told about this. I will be expecting something in writing through my door; I don’t want to have to rely on hearsay.


