The world’s most anticipated sporting event, the Summer Olympics 2012, will be held in London, UK. Four years ago, Beijing handed over the Olympics to London for 2012 in a spectacular closing ceremony. I was a lucky one among the 91,000 spectators packed inside the Bird Nest Stadium to witness the great success of the Beijing Olympics. This makes me reminiscent of the best experiences I have ever had during the entire stay in Beijing. Big thanks to the organizing committee and the Chinese government who had done tremendous preparation work prior to the games.
A lot of careful planning was taken to help smooth the flow of traffic during the 2008 Olympics. In Beijing, the Chinese government planned to have better traffic control during the Olympics to decongest the highways. The idea was to reduce half of the traffic by only allowing private cars to drive on certain days using the following guidelines:
1) If the license plate of a private car ends with an odd number, you are only allowed to drive on odd days.
2) If the license plate ends with an even number, you are only allowed to drive on even days.
By doing so, the city traffic was not only greatly reduced but it also improved the air quality. Now the question that comes to mind is whether London will do a better job in traffic management.
The London Olympics is expected to attract 9 million spectators over 16 days; additionally, the Paralympics will bring a further 2 million over the next 11 days in addition to 15,000 athletes, 7,000 technical officials, and thousands of media. To relieve the city traffic, Londoners have been advised to try to work from home, stagger working hours, work longer but fewer days, take annual leave, and they are also being asked to use public transport, walk or cycle whenever possible. In fact, both Beijing and London understand that the success of the Games greatly depends upon every one of their civilians doing bit by bit to keep the city moving, thus demonstrating careful planning to the visitors all over the world.
In summary, whether it’s the Beijing Olympics or the London Olympics, the host countries try their very best to serve up the best in order to impress the world. Prior to the games, there is tremendous work spanning over many years to ensure the success of the 16-day games. A famous Chinese proverb says the following: “A single day of sub-zero temperature is not enough to create three feet of ice”, meaning that great things cannot be accomplished in a short period of time.
