In the end all the fear and consternation was in vain. VANOC pulled it off and did so by reducing “background” traffic by much more than 30% (some estimates say 60%). The truth is very few people who were on the roads during the Games DIDN’T say “that was the easiest driving experience of my life, there was no one on the roads”.
The messaging worked so well that the actual contingency planning and transportation infrastructure didn’t have to. Knowing what they know now I would expect if you were to get a senior manager at the VANOC transportation team alone and honest they’d tell you that they could have pulled this off for far less money. Keep in mind that comment comes with the caveat of “knowing what they know now” in front of it.
All this to say that the congratulations for transportation success is owed to the communications staff at VANOC, Jan Jansen and his team at the RMOW and the community as a whole for buying into the process. The lack of snow cannot be underestimated as snow clearing contingencies were never put to the test but after all is said and done the Vancouver Olympic transportation experience was a glowing success.
Last night at Whistler’s municipal council meeting former Whistler CAO and Games-time manager Jim Godfrey presented the Olympic lessons learned to the community. The list of thank-yous was long and I was happy to see that the transportation team was top of his list.
The whole event was a real community effort and success. For our part Transportation Whistler and Ridebooker.com carried 12,000 people in those two weeks. We all worked hard during the last couple years to make this work. Being a part of Whistler’s Olympic transportation effort was a joy due mainly to the efforts of Whistler local leadership. Jan Jansen, Bill Murray and others did a phenomenal job making sure that the community transportation effort was pulling in the same direction.
Lesson learned: If you are having a big event… close public parking lots, gate your highway, massively upgrade transit and tell everyone and everyones mom that they can’t drive their cars. It may sound crass and maybe it is… but it works!
