Olympic Fears: Vancouver Falls Apart After Snowfall

I've never seen snow like this in Vancouver, but by Canadian standards it hasn't been very much. However, the city has been virtually shut down for a week. Even though it hasn't snowed for about 4 days the roads are still messy, the sidewalks impassable. Last night, not the busiest night of the year, we had to wait an hour and a half for a taxi.

The Globe and Mail has a piece about how this would be a disaster if it happens during the Olympics.

With 400,000 passengers passing through Vancouver in the last week on 5,000 flights, the present volume of traffic at the airport is very close to what it will be during the Games, said Don Ehrenholz, vice-president of operations for Vancouver International Airport. He admitted operations weren't perfect over the last few days, but promised improvement by the time the Games start.

“In our planning for 2010 we are planning that there will be a snowstorm of a fairly large magnitude at the worst possible time — either at the very first couple of days or the very last day or two, which is one of the more difficult times for getting people out on time,” Mr. Ehrenholz said.

....

“I understand that the type of weather that we've had over the past week or so is a one-in-10-year event,” he added. “Let's hope we've gotten it out of our system for another 10 years.”

I'm not looking forward to these Olympics.