It matters not what international newspaper or wire report you get pretty much the same conclusion — construction work for the Olympics will be finished in time.

Kevan Gosper, vice president of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) coordination commission, said ‘We are very happy with the progress. They are right on schedule with the construction.’

The main stadium, the Bird’s Nest, which will hold 91,000 spectators will be complete by the end of March next year.
The neighboring water sports complex, the ‘water cube,’ as well as the other facilities are expected to completed by the end of this year.

The plan may sound very ambitious, but the organizers are confident that the schedule can be kept.
Sun Weijia, chief of media operations at the organizing committee said, ‘It can be done. The workers labour in shifts around the clock, seven days per week.’

The media interest in the Games is a record in itself. Some 5,600 journalists and photographers were accredited by the IOC to cover the events.

On transport Beijing’s mayor Wang Qishan saw the inauguration of a new 27-kilometer subway line as ‘a sign of our determination to give priority to the development of the city’s public transport infrastructure.’ By next year, the subway lines will be extended from the current 142 kilometres to 200 kilometres to provide access to all Olympic sports facilities.

The organisers have also received accolades for the athlete’s accommodations.

Gerd Graus, an official German observer of the proceedings said, ‘The athletes will be more than pleased with the Olympic Village, which offers nice rooms with ample space and good comfort.’

Are there any problems?

The weather and the smog. The IOC has voiced concerns about the expected hot and humid weather that typically prevails in Beijing in August, as well as the smog.

Road traffic restriction trials in August this year only slightly improved the air pollution, but at least resulted in much better traffic flow.

Kevan Gosper is convinced that the measures, if rigorously maintained during the Games, will help to alleviate the otherwise daily traffic congestion. He said, ‘I don’t foresee any problems with transportation.

Zhang Xiaodong, director of transport at the Olympics, told a session  of the 14th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS)  in Beijing that nearly 16,000 drivers and service personnel will keep more than 10,000 official Olympics vehicles running smoothly.

Nearly half of the 10,000 vehicles, all equipped with wireless communication devices, will exclusively serve Games events, while 2,200 shuttles and sponsors’ buses, as well as almost 2,000 rental vehicles, will be available for the Olympic community at large.

He said, ‘An integrated traffic control center with a transport operation center, seven sub-centers, and car teams set up by the Olympics transit stops and venues is to be formed.’

A similar three-layered, real-time command-and-control system will be adopted to monitor all Olympic venues, lanes and locations on a 24/7 basis.

Considerable challenges, however, remain. Nearly 5,000 members of the International Olympics Committee (IOC) and VIPs, over 12,000 athletes and team officials, 3,000 technical officials, more than 21,600 accredited media professionals, nearly 400,000 sponsors and guests, and over 100,000 staff are expected to attend the Games. They all have to be transported.

Beijing has initiated a series of drastic moves to encourage transit usage most of which involve moving people out of cars and on to subways. All the signs are it will very possibly work as planned with the odd hiccup here and there.
Source: People’s Daily Online

More than 10,000 labourers are working to finish 52 new stations and 87 km of the Beijing underground system. The city’s Government is massively expanding the Beijing subway in the hope of fixing its giant transport headache.

If the Olympic Games were held today, it would take spectators hours to get to the venues. Chinese Government officials publicly acknowledge the problem and took journalists along to visit what they hope will become part of the solution to Beijing’s traffic woes.

The city is building four new subway lines to be ready in time for the Olympic Games. A 114-kilometre subway will become a 200-kilometre network, with 56 new underground stations to be built by the time the Olympic flame is lit on August 8, 2008.

Beijing Government spokesman Liu Xiaoming says the benefits to Beijingers of the expanded subway will be enormous. He said, ‘With these new railway lines, pressure on road transport will be greatly reduced. It’ll also increase people’s ability to get around the city. It will change the current transportation structure and stifle the trend of using cars in the city.’

The full expansion, to incorporate Olympic venues, will not be finished until just weeks before the games begin.
Source: ABC

Passengers traveling on Beijing’s new No. 5 subway line in 2008 will be able to watch live coverage of the Olympic Games. Ding Shukui, assistant general manager of Beijing Railway Construction and Management, said the subway line, under construction for the last four years, will have a transmitter every 200 meters that can receive above-ground TV signals.

The locomotive and the last carriage on the train will be equipped with receivers that can transmit signals to the eight liquid crystal TV sets in each carriage.

The new subway line also provides passengers with good access to mobile phone signals which means that passengers will be able to make and receive calls which not everyone will think a good and wonderful idea.

The No. 5 north-south subway line, which runs from Taipingzhuang North Station in northern Beijing’s Changping district to Songjiazhuang Station in southern Fengtai district, will go into operation in September. With mobile phones ringing with important messages which must get through. Like ‘Have you seen Ding lately?’
Source: China.org.cn