MIND THE GAP
Ben Webster explores how 360,000 daily visitors will get around Stratford during the games
For 16 days in 2012, Stratford will be the centre of the world. Up to 360,000 people a day will visit the Olympic Park during the games, but the key measure of their success will be the number that choose to return at a later date. Will the billions being invested in Stratford “make east the new west”, as Newham mayor Sir Robin Wales optimistically predicts?
If good public transport is the key to urban regeneration, Stratford cannot fail in its aim to become London’s third most important retail centre after Oxford Circus and Knightsbridge. It is already well served by rail, light rail and underground lines but the number of trains will double in time for the Olympics.
Hugh Sumner, the Olympic Delivery Authority’s (ODA) transport director, is surprisingly precise about train frequency for an event still five years away: “There will be one every 13.87 seconds at the three stations, Stratford Regional, Stratford International and West Ham.” Sumner has a yellowed 1948 London Transport poster on his office wall that shows routes to the venues at the Olympics when they were last held in the city. Stratford is not even on the map. But on the 2012 version, it will stand out as the best connected of London’s urban centres, the point where 12 separate rail routes converge.
From February 2009, the Docklands Light Railway will run under the Thames to Woolwich Arsenal, making a single economic area from parts of London divided and isolated by a stretch of water. By mid-2010, the DLR will run from Canning Town to Stratford along a recently closed section of the North London Line. A new loop will link Stratford Regional to Stratford International, allowing fast, direct access to Canary Wharf for High Speed One commuters from Kent. Stratford may also gain a link to the continent if it can persuade Eurostar that it is worth stopping only six minutes after leaving St Pancras.
Further DLR extensions likely
Further DLR extensions are likely to be built to serve the wider Thames Gateway area, complementing two bus rapid transit systems along either side of the river, Sumner says. The East London Line extension will link Croydon with Hackney by 2010, and continue to reach Highbury & Islington by 2011. But the ultimate goal of giving London the rail equivalent of a ring road will have to wait until funding is found to build the missing link to Clapham Junction. An opportunity has also been missed to allow trains to run directly from the East London Line to Stratford, via a short eastwards spur from Dalston Junction to the North London Line.
More capacity
TfL (Transport for London) is focusing instead on providing more capacity on the grossly overcrowded North London Line. It is adding an extra carriage and doubling the peak frequency to eight trains an hour. However, it has quietly backtracked on the promise in the Olympic bid to double the number of carriages per train to six. Sumner claims that none of the extra “white elephants” once the Games are over.
With 35,000 new housing units being built in the area, there will certainly be about 100,000 more people trying to get out of, or around, Stratford each day. But will there be anything to tempt outsiders in? The future use of the Olympic Stadium remains uncertain after West Ham United rejected an offer to make it their new home.
Shopping centre
With few cultural attractions promised as yet, the biggest draw will be a giant new shopping centre to rival Bluewater and Lakeside. Unlike these, though, Stratford’s mall will be designed largely for shoppers arriving by public transport. Perhaps the greatest transport legacy of the Olympics will not be new lines or carriages but a change in attitudes to travel in the suburbs, where the car is still king.
London 2012 will be the first “public transport Olympics”, with only a few disabled spectators arriving by car. Fat cats enjoying corporate hospitality will find there is no parking for their limousines. Plans for two park-and-ride sites near the M25 have also been scrapped, meaning spectators will not be able to count on travelling even part of the way by car.
Personal travel plans
Under the “active spectator programme”, every ticket will be issued with a travel plan tailored to the holder’s needs and promoting walking and cycling. After a slow start, the plans for walking and cycling access to Stratford are now taking shape, with 50km of new cycle routes and an attempt to carve attractive footpaths through east London’s industrial wasteland. The showpiece will be the Greenway from West Ham to Victoria Park, which has been blighted for years by flytipping and barbed wire.
If Stratford succeeds in hosting the first congestion-free modern Olympics, it will show the world that cities work better when cars are all but banished.
Ben Webster is an award-winning transport correspondent for The Times newspaper
