The Olympics: Follow the Money

When I mentioned last week that $2 Billion was going to be the final price tag, those that preferred the figure $8 Billion as the final cost immediately harangued me.

Why two prices, and why is one 4 times bigger than the first? The reason is infrastructure prices, and how it is being spent.

 

When your city hosts the Olympics, it’s going to be too small to handle the influx of so many people, and you won’t have the facilities to handle it. This doesn’t necessarily mean sporting venues, either. In our case, it means roads, rapid transit, and a conference centre. ROADS: We have a tiny road system that doesn’t even have dedicated right hand turns at most downtown junctions, because the land is so expensive, we cannot dedicate space to anything but buildings. Of course this has led to too many cars downtown, not enough parking, and a crappy public transit system by comparison.

The journey from Vancouver to Whistler is a fantastic 3 hour drive along Howe Sound and up into the Mountains to Whistler. Unfortunately, three hours is just too long to spend on the road these days, so people speed and get killed making it a dangerous trip.

RAPID TRANSIT: Like most North American cities, we don’t have a direct transit route from our airport to the city – because cab companies ‘rule’ that area of transport with an iron fist. Unfortunately, we also have to cross at least two bridges across water to get to anywhere downtown, which adds huge traffic problems to the usual crawl. Our mid week rush hours are now 6am to 8pm, with a slow hour between 2 and 3 – which is when most International flights arrive.

CONFERENCE CENTRE: Once you get downtown, the ability of the city to fill hotel rooms with the size of our current Conference centre is, sadly, too small to make enough money. We have a fabulous design for one (that would be built into the water to save on infrastructure.), but can’t afford to build it – pity, because if it had a large-scale launch event for it, it would have an incredible impact on would be visitors.

 

What? Like the Olympics? Canada has always been a popular Olympic destination, we are on the US West coast time zone, Whistler was designed as an Olympic venue in the 60’s, and is the best ski resort in North America – why not?

 

Six years after we got the bid, we have a rail rapid transit link directly to the city from the airport, the highway to Whistler is flatter, wider, and has cut the journey time down to two hours, and we have our Conference centre that will be the 21^st century looking home to the media centre. Together with the $1 Billion security costs that weren’t envisioned prior to September 2001, there is your additional $6 Billion. Worth it? Worth it for the Canadian tax payer to pay for it? Well, from this city’s point of view – YES!