Posted 24th July 2002   OK, a hint of currency in today's rant - it means it'll lose appeal over time, but for the moment I have a nagging suspicion there may be a few more rants along this subject theme in the next fortnight. So I'm adding dates to these posts/rants, and seeing how I feel about the entire bloody thing.   First of all, I really do want to see the commonwealth games succeed - Manchester's been whiffling on for years about hosting the Olympics, and always getting turned down. I don't want the pious pricks on the selection/rejection committee to be able to sit, point the finger and go "see, we were right to not give them the Olympics" any more than probably the City Council want to see the same thing. And they've put in a lot of work, a lot of the place looks simply stunning.   But some of the infrastructure is a nightmare, to say the least. The stadium is a stunner, the swimming arena is amazing, even Piccadilly station is looking pretty good at last, after 18 months of being refitted - I won't comment on the way it's been completed ONE DAY before the Games starts. Burt then we get to the problems - and it's one of my favourite rants, the Manchester public transport system, is a particular nightmare.    First of all, we were supposed to have a tram system going from the city centre (center, for Americans/HTML freaks) to the games stadium.      Ooops, no, we've left it too late to build it in time.    So we'll put in a dedicated bus-way along the same route the tram should have gone, then transform it to a tram route after the Games.      Oh no, we've left it too late to do that too.   So we'll bring in tons of extra busses, do everything by bus and taxi from the city centre (whatever) and use the roads and we'll make sure the buses are free. That sounds good.     Oh no, we'll do that, but free? No, no, no, don't think so. And more busses? Well, that sounds expensive. Not sure we want to do that.   So we've got a few more busses than normal, and the passengers have got to pay for it. How good will that look for our visitors from however-bloody-many countries? The taxi companies - never people to miss a potential profit given the chance - have been garbaging on about increasing the fares for the duration of the games, which seems "fair", considering the normal British tradition of ripping off Johnny Foreigner for every penny we can get.   And of course the roads around the stadium are going to be totally shafted for the next two weeks. No matter what anyone tries to say, they're going to be a mess. I personally think the traffic's going to be a total nightmare on the major routes, and no real escape, because rather than catering for the extra influx of people into the city, and trying to get people off the roads, what has the city managed to do? You've got it - we've put more vehicles on the roads. What a stroke of traffic-planning genius.   So we'll see how things go - I really hope it will all go smoothly, but I'm sure I'll be writing more on the traffic jams and the infrastructure. Thank God I've got a laptop - I'll probably be writing anything I want to add while sat on a bus in a traffic jam.   Doesn't it just make you feel patriotic?