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Friday April 15, 2005

Obligatory first entry

Personal

This is already my third first journal entry if you count previous attempts on my old "Blog of Rob" and the short-lived LiveJournal I maintained. Or maybe fourth, if you include my contributions. Sixth if you count the news engines of some of my software projects as well.

But this journal will be slightly different from all its predecessors: all interests of mine that I care to write about can now be found at a single location. It didn't make much sense to continue a thorough separation because of all my writings are based on a single frame of reference anyway.

A significant improvement of this journal in comparison with all previous ones: it is no longer necessary to register a user account to post comments as I have hacked together the seemingly popular method of letting users enter a code displayed in a generated image.

Update: I have imported my old LiveJournal posts of 2005 and will eventually import "Blog of Rob" entries of 2003 and 2004, so technically this is no longer the first post.

London 2012 - Back the bid!

Urbanity

It should come as no surprise that I have a favourite city for the 2012 Olympic bids: London. I have never made it a secret that I am not too fond of the French and therefore Paris was never an option for me. I realise that makes me biased, but the IOC is not unexperienced in letting politics inspire their decisions either, so I do not feel too bad about it. Simply put, I lack any affinity with Madrid and Moscow. Combined with their sub-optimal bids that left two candidate cities battling for my support: New York City and London.

New York City is an icon and would without a doubt provide a more memorable olympiad than Atlanta and Los Angeles combined. Or would it? Less than three months until the definite IOC vote, the city still has not resolved a very crucial problem for its bid: Hudson Yards. It cannot build an Olympic stadium there if the property is sold to another party on the market. And it very well might be, or at least it does not seem likely that a satisfactionary solution will be found before the IOC deadline expires.

London does not have these problems. Canary Wharf is a wonderful example of succesful city redevelopment. Even the fate of the dreaded Millennium Dome in North Greenwich has turned for the better: a conversion to a 25.000 seat arena is already in progress, although it will host no less than 80.000 visitors in case of a succesful bid. Stratford would undergo massive rejuvenation in the style that earned London the status of being the greenest capital in the world.

The main concern people have expressed are the transporation links. I only visit London for a few days every other month, but even I am fully aware of performance and capacity problems of the tube. A trip is not complete without a signal failure at Camden Town causing delays on the Northern line and I have learned to study Circle line connections because fires and floodings on the Central line occur more frequently than I would like them too. But note that the main line providing access to the Olympic facilities is the Jubilee line which is not only the most modern one but in my experience one of the most reliable.

And the Jubilee line is not the only tube line going to Stratford. The Central line will take visitors there from Liverpool Street station and both those lines intersect with the District and Hammersmith lines near Stratford, as does the extremely reliable Docklands Light Railway (DLR). Even National Rail could be used when transfering from the Victoria line at Highbury and Islington. And did I mention the seven minute service service from King's Cross station?

But London's main asset has probably been overlooked by many: the city has one of Europe's largest airports in Heathrow, especially when the fifth terminal is completed. London City Airport would take visitors to the Olympic action and inner city in a heartbeat. And low-cost carriers such as EasyJet and RyanAir are using the airports at Luton, Gatwick and Stansted (that makes five in total) to ensure London is probably the most accessible European city. There is virtually no airport in Europe that does not offer flights to London, usually offering a choice between frequency, affordability or both. Why is this so important? Because the IOC will definitely, most definitely, want to avoid the Oylympic ticket sales disaster of Athens 2004.

Add on top of that accessibility: a massive night life and gig culture in the UK capital, London's insane amount of musicals and theatre productions, royalty and celebrities that make news papers interesting even for the most disconcerned tourist and a top selection of hotels for all budgets. Put together, London 2012 would be an event for an entire continent which is something none of the other candidate cities could provide.

So I definitely want to make Britain proud and leap for London by backing the bid! Back the bid yourself!

Next day: Saturday April 16, 2005 Previous day: Friday April 1, 2005

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