Planners Working to Avoiding Transportation Disaster at Olympic Games

Recalling the 1996 Atlanta Games, "with bus drivers getting lost, athletes arriving moments before their events and overloaded trains that couldn't get residents home," the improvements were prompted by the International Olympic Committee's demands to prevent such issues from coming up again.

"Among the biggest problems are the streets themselves - laid out as they are in a pattern relatively unchanged since medieval times. That means only a handful of thoroughfares, and even those are nothing like the great boulevards that bisect cities like New York and Paris. Earmarking some lanes for Olympic traffic could cause disruption - because they are the main ones."