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Toronto 2024 Olympic Bid (Dead)
- Thread starter Southcore
- Start date
Hipster Duck
Senior Member
I'm afraid that even with the motivation of an Olympics we won't build the transit that we need. We will probably build a line here or there, but most of the facilities will probably be located on existing [overcrowded] lines, and the line that gets built will probably end up serving the games for two weeks more than the city and its citizens forever (something like an LRT to the stadium site, rather than, say, the DRL or a regional rail network to serve the GTA).
It seems that the only reason most of us want the Olympics is because of the possibility of transit improvements. I think that's a very huge risk to take, given that if we land the Olympics, we're saddled with debt for a generation and no government will want to invest in our transit system afterwards for the forseeable future.
sixrings
Senior Member
what we need the most, a DRL, I am sure we will get... everything else is secondary in my opinion and just helps the system.
TOperson
Active Member
I don't know why you are sure of that, but anyway, "everything else is secondary" strikes me as a very cavalier attitude to take towards spending huge sums of public money - money that could be spent on so many things of real importance.
Even just NOT spending the money would be more worthwhile because at least taxes wouldn't have to be raised to pay for the games, nor would any money need to be diverted from education, housing, health care and other budgets (this happened in New South Wales).
TOperson
Active Member
I've done some research and I think I've found out where this "such-and-such Olympics made money" thing comes from.
It refers to the finances of the local organizing committee, e.g. SOCOG, VANOC. Apparently sometimes the local OC does make a profit, though I haven't come across any cases of an OC having its books audited.
Anyway, these profit/loss outcomes DO NOT factor in the contribution of public funds.
I imagine it is quite a bit easier to make a profit when you off-load the majority of the costs onto someone else.
As I've said upthread, it's extremely difficult to obtain reliable numbers on costs and revenues, so very few people - if any - really know what the financial outcomes are.
Why all the secrecy?
It refers to the finances of the local organizing committee, e.g. SOCOG, VANOC. Apparently sometimes the local OC does make a profit, though I haven't come across any cases of an OC having its books audited.
Anyway, these profit/loss outcomes DO NOT factor in the contribution of public funds.
I imagine it is quite a bit easier to make a profit when you off-load the majority of the costs onto someone else.
As I've said upthread, it's extremely difficult to obtain reliable numbers on costs and revenues, so very few people - if any - really know what the financial outcomes are.
Why all the secrecy?
Riverdale Rink Rat
Senior Member
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Seriously?
An Oly booster who uses 'sixrings' as his/her nom de plume, and lives in Ste. Catherine's, just tried to use the transit card to further the obsession?
hahahahaha....
An Oly booster who uses 'sixrings' as his/her nom de plume, and lives in Ste. Catherine's, just tried to use the transit card to further the obsession?
hahahahaha....
sixrings
Senior Member
My name is sixrings because michael jordan has sixrings..It was my password forever. I dont know that person you are speaking about but I can assure you that is not me. I live near Bathurst and Eglinton if you must know and was formerly at university and king. All I am saying is that the Olympics forces three levels of governemtn to work together and within a time constraight. As a result things get done. It might cost alot but at least it happens. As a Torontonian I dont mind paying in to get some money out of the feds especially. Thanks.
Automation Gallery
Superstar
Right-on, unlike the Rink Rat that lives in Riverdale and is all doom and gloom and anti-everything.
TOperson
Active Member
So, you're OK with giving your money to the feds via income tax, sales tax, etc, then giving MORE of your money to the feds (and the other two levels of govt) via taxes, all to get a fraction of that money back in the form of infrastructure improvements AND to see a lot more of your money spent on purely Olympic-related expenses but NOT spent on other programs or improvements in your city.
So you really would buy a car to get a free cell phone, without even getting the car, because you believe it's only way you can get the cell phone.
GenerationW
Senior Member
They might try, but they'd have to overcome the precedent of having a part-temporary stadium as part of Toronto's most recent bid, and they'd have to convince the feds and the province to spend hundreds of millions more on just a stadium for a tenant that doesn't (and may never) exist.
I don't see that happening.
intoronto1125
Active Member
Toronto should use a venue plan similar to london 2012. It can be done on the low end and does not have to be extravagant.
TOperson
Active Member
Except that isn't what has happened. London 2012 is already the most expensive Olympics ever. (Maybe they somehow managed to keep venue costs relatively low - though I haven't read that anywhere but here - but overall the spending is massive.)
TOperson
Active Member
The link with the table I posted with the example of Barcelona seems to be broken, so you might have missed it, I uploaded it again here:
Oh, I did read a few articles, and since they seemed strangely incomplete or decidedly misleading, I went and searched for papers instead. Here you can find a few:
http://www.tourismnortheast.co.uk/downloads/olympic_impact_on_tourism_study.pdf
http://www.gamesmonitor.org.uk/files/When-the-Games-Come-to-Town-M-Smith-2008.pdf
http://books.google.ca/books?id=GQz...1&ots=FEg_9_8h3u&dq=olympics&output=html_text
You'll see there's a pattern: tourism grows steadily for about 4 years previous to the Olympics, followed by a big spike the year of the event, then comes a dip in hotel occupancy the next year or two (fueled by the oversupply of hotel rooms left after the olympics, even if in some cases tourist numbers are steady, there are just too many rooms), and then a steady growth for about a decade. The articles that state tourism is negatively impacted by an Olympiad mainly concentrate on the two year slump after the games (the "peak and through" effect), and ignore the previous years of growth and the big rise that comes after a few years in most cases. They also seem to focus on hotel occupancy without explaining the natural oversupply after an event of this magnitude, or they talk about growth expressed in percentages instead of the actual number of tourists (it's more eye-catching to read "there was a 3% dip the next year!!!" than "total numbers went back to previous levels for a year or two before they started to rise again")
And please don't simplify my arguments. First: I said I think the Olympics CAN be a catalyst for tourism if done right. Of course, it's not always the case, but when it works, like with Barcelona, it works big time (and no, Barcelona is not the only Olympic Games that hasn't had a negative economic impact for the host city, it's just the brightest success. In fact, every Olympiad since 1984 has been profitable). Second: I never even said tourism was the main selling point for me, but the regeneration of former derelict areas, the homes that are built (both affordable and at market rates) and the transit infrastructure that's left as a legacy. And I think a city like Toronto can stand to gain a lot more than a city that already has that, like London.
How many of those cities in that top 10 list hosted the Olympics during the period studied? Notice that some cities had nice increases in tourism WITHOUT the Olympics. So it can be done.
Of the three articles/books you posted, the first was written by a tourism consulting firm in the UK. FAR from an unbiased organization.
The last was written by Holger Pruess, an Olympics insider who never really challenges any of the myths or misperceptions of the games. (Otherwise he wouldn't be an insider anymore.)
The middle one is from an anti-Olympics website, but it cites Pruess, so I doubt it seriously challenges the Olympic frame. (Haven't had a chance to read it all yet.)
Anyway, all of that is tiny fraction of the research that has been done, so it amounts to little on its own.
The Olympics are big, big money. Big money attracts seriously shady people (can you think of a big-money industry that doesn't, especially one related to urban development?) and there is a lot of secrecy around Olympic finances and deals. Do you really think it's all conducted with integrity, all for nothing but a love of sports and the desire to do good works in a new city? The IOC was run by avowed Fascist for 40 years - the same period that the games got into big money and sponsorships, etc. That's a heckuva lot of red flags.
Hank
Active Member
More than Beijing? I find that hard to believe.
MisterF
Senior Member
Wait, what? Fortress had nothing to do with the Olympics! It's been around since the 70s if not earlier and closed around 2005. I've skied there, it was a back to basics place that was more of a local ski hill than a true resort. It's kind of out of the way too. Unfortunately it couldn't survive the competition from larger, more developed resorts like Sunshine, Nakiska, Lake Louise, etc. Incidentally, I've heard that they're having another go at it, fully opening again in a two years. Apparently it got some new infrastructure as part of the deal when they shot Inception there. Yet another reason to be a Chris Nolan fan!