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Ban on cars planned for London Olympics

The organization charged with developing the infrastructure for the London 2012 Olympics is planning a radical car ban for all of the games' major venues across Britain, the Times reported in an early edition yesterday.

Citing a preview of the travel plan it had seen, which described the 2012 games as the "country's largest peacetime logistical operation," the paper said that aside from a small number of disabled people, all spectators will be forced to take public transport, walk or use a bicycle.

"We have a very aggressive program to make it the greenest games in modern times," Olympic Delivery Authority transport director Hugh Sumner told the Times.

"We want to leave both a hard legacy in terms of infrastructure and a living legacy in the way people think about transport and about how they travel to sports and cultural events," he said.

The expected 8 million visitors will not be allowed to drive to the games' events in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow, Cardiff, Weymouth and Portland.

On the busiest of days during the games, 800,000 people will converge on the venues, the Times said.

Everyone who books a ticket for any event during the 2012 Olympics will receive a personalized itinerary which will show how to get from their home to the venue itself, and on the day of the event, live travel information will be sent to ticket-holders on their mobile phones.
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