July 07, 2005
Paying for the rings
The last thing London needs is more bad news today, but it got it anyway, albeit hopefully on a smaller scale: Now that Britain's capital has been picked to host the 2012 Olympics, there's concern over how to get all the required stadiums and transit infrastructure built on time. "We don't have a very good track record on these major projects completed on deadline without having to spend an awful lot of money," Cynthia Hay of the Capital Transport Campaign told the Guardian yesterday.
London Olympic organizers need only look to Vancouver, host of the 2010 winter games, for a cautionary tale: The director of British Columbia's Council of Construction Trades Associations warns that rising steel and labor costs, combined with an immovable deadline, could mean "when it comes right down to the crunch, it's very possible that we're still going to have to import people at whatever price it will take, to bring them here to help us finish things off." Vancouver Olympic organizers say cost overruns on the now-$620 million project could rise by between 25 and 40%; they say they'll "do whatever it takes" to avoid hitting up the government for cost overruns.
