Olympic train service could be overwhelmed during Games

[John Ashworth]

Olympic Javelin train service could be overwhelmed during Games

Rail bosses making plans to turn people away from high-speed link from central London to Olympic park during peak hours

Gwyn Topham, transport correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Friday 25 May 2012 19.06 BST

The high-speed train service taking spectators from central London to the Olympic Park is likely to become so inundated that rail bosses have made contingency plans to turn thousands of passengers away at peak times.

The Javelin service has been presented as a key part of the capital's transport plans since London won the right to host the games in 2005. Although the Olympic Delivery Authority insists it has "robust plans for a smooth operation", it seems that some hoping for a fast ride on the trains – which have been named after Olympians, including Tanni Grey-Thompson and Sebastian Coe – may have to travel by bus or tube.

Network Rail, which operates St Pancras station under contract to High Speed One, the station and track owners, is building queueing zones stretching into the immigration area for the Eurostar international services, in effect moving the administrative border with France to accommodate the crowds.

But Robin Gisby, director of operations for Network Rail, told the Commons transport select committee this week that the queues may be such that they will advise passengers to take alternative routes. These routes take, according to Transport for London's calculations, five or six times longer even without factoring in Olympic queues.

He said they would be prepared to advise them when queueing would take longer than the alternatives – a scenario that suggests possible hour-long queues are envisaged for a six-minute journey.

Each train can seat 680 people. One source said they were counting on "leeway" to cram on more than the standard capacity of 336 extra standing passengers. But even with 12 services an hour in both directions at the busiest times, the operators warn that only a small minority of spectators can expect to use the trains.

The trains, although entirely rebranded under Locog demands for the duration of the games, will be operated by Southeastern as normal. A spokesperson for Southeastern stressed: "The Javelin is one of the modes, but it can only carry a proportion of spectators – TfL will do a lot of the heavy lifting. There will be buses, tubes, it's about working in partnership."

A spokesman for High Speed One said: "We know that the Javelin will be extremely popular, the most popular way to get to the Olympics. We've doubled the length of the trains to cope with the extra numbers. But we're certainly prepared to tell people to try alternate routes if they're waving tickets and Usain Bolt is going to be on the starting blocks."

Spectators issued with a Games travelcard will be able to use the service, but there are no reserved seats. Nor is there priority boarding for athletes or officials, many of whom are based at the St Pancras Renaissance hotel. The president of the IAAF, the world athletics body, after testing the Javelin last year, said: "The IAAF family can be at the stadium within 15 minutes, which is fantastic." Locog yesterday confirmed there would be no rail equivalent of the Olympic route network's Games lanes.

A Network Rail spokesman said the most important thing was that spectators and other travellers used the Get Ahead of the Games websites, which identify the peak demand at St Pancras as mornings from Friday 3 August onwards. The website suggests that those being diverted to nearby tube stations would also face waits of over 30 minutes to board a train.

He added: "There will be queues, undoubtedly. But lots of queues won't represent chaos." He said they would have highly visible Olympic signage, extra staff and passenger information at all stations to keep people updated.