The Politics of Olympic Transportation Planning: The Case of the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympic Games Tuna Batuhan The Florida State University, U.S.A. The political situation and institutional structure determines the policy approach that a host city will use to prepare for the Olympic Games. Although each host city uses fixed strategies to plan for the short-term event, the outcome of these strategies mostly depends on a host city s political structure and its institutional culture. In other words, the impact of mega-events on a host city s long-term planning strategy varies according to the choice to continue using these strategies in the long-term and is restricted by the host city s planning traditions. In this sense, this paper will analyze and evaluate the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympic Games by focusing on the role of institutions, politics, and power relations on Olympic transportation planning in order to gain a better understanding of the positive and negative impacts of the events on Atlanta. This is particularly important given the fact that the impact of Olympic Games on a host cities long-term policy-making process has largely remained understudied, and this study represents an initial attempt to explore this phenomenon. Introduction The Olympics are not just a sporting competition, but are also an international phenomenon in many respects. 1 This spirit of competition is shared by rival candidate cities. In order to win their bids to host the Olympic Games, cities must put their best foot forward. Since the 1984 Los Angeles Games, the Olympics have grown in many aspects, mainly due to the financial success of the Los Angeles Games and the increasing economic potential of the Games. Thus, the event planning process becomes more comprehensive and more challenging. The Olympic Games generate a demand not only for the event itself, but also for other related services, including transportation. The transportation concept is one of the technical criteria used to evaluate the candidate cities capacity to host the Olympic Games, and is also one of the main legacies left by the Games. Olympic Transportation Plans as a connective element of different activities which play a crucial role to avoid underutilization of resources, infrastructure, and facilities use the correct modes for development pattern by linking policy and transportation to achieve long-term planning goals with a more efficient and strict schedule. Regardless of their hidden agendas, improved transportation service is a major goal for each Olympic host city, since the demand for transport peaks during the short time period of the event. Quality public transportation is the backbone to passenger movement for the Olympics. All game areas are designed to be accessible by pub- 68
lic transportation, while other modes of transportation, such as parks, automobile lanes, bike lanes, and sidewalks for pedestrians, are linked to it. The Olympic Games require years of event preparation and pose one of the biggest global planning challenges. As such, urban planning is an essential part of the events planning process, and the event itself provides an exceptional stage to seek long-term approaches. Since mega-events have an impact on cities beyond sport, and these non-sport outcomes may be even more important than the sporting outcomes, the events can be analyzed from an urban perspective in terms of how post-event usage, with its side effects and parallel linkages, relates to urban processes. 2 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympic Games The Atlanta region s population has grown rapidly in the last few decades. Especially after the Olympics, the region has attracted millions of people and the economy has expanded. Class and racial separation are the two characteristics of the region. Historical class and racial separation became permanent with the edge-city suburban development, exclusionary suburban land-use regulations, and weak fair-housing enforcement, which created two separate cities: black south and white north. 3 It is mostly the city s downtown business leaders who control local politics by influencing elected officials. This political environment in Atlanta leads to policy decisions that neglect public interests and undermine regional and social needs because of a narrowly defined private interest. 4 Limited vision, class and race segregation, along with the lack of attention to fundamental issues, created serious problems that were transferred to the future decision makers of the city. After President Reagan eliminated several federal aid programs geared toward urban policy in 1984, U.S. cities had to look for other funding sources and, for Atlanta, the Olympics provided the perfect economic impetus to focus on the revitalization of the downtown area. 5 Atlanta s bid for hosting the Olympic Games can be understood as the product of an active growth coalition that already existed within the city. For Atlanta, the vision and the central motivation among growth elites were to show that Atlanta was a world-class city that was capable of hosting the Olympic Games. In order to justify local development plans, public policy strategies promoted tourism, and the Olympic Games provided the promotional means to reach a broader population. 6 For Atlanta, the Olympic bid was not just about hosting a major sporting event, but to transform the city into a city with worldclass amenities and business opportunities. Atlanta s bid was considered strong in terms of its concepts for transportation, in particular, its plans to enhance its airport so that it was a world-leader in terms of capacity and passenger safety and comfort, as well as its plans to enhance existing sport facilities, accommodations, and communication systems. However, these concepts created serious problems during the Games. 7 The business elites were pushing for Atlanta to bid for the Olympics. The Atlanta bid was developed under the leadership of Billy Payne, a real-estate attorney and former baseball player. Payne s vision and determination, along with the support of his friends, collectively known as the Crazy Atlanta Nine, later formed the Atlanta Organizing Committee (AOC), which enabled Atlanta to host the Olympics in 1996. 8 The members of the AOC preferred an organizational structure where decision-making could be closely controlled and operations would be less subject to public oversight. The Atlanta Olympics included the features of Los Angeles Games, with a minimum of new public investment and a maximization of private profit, 9 mainly because the Games were privately funded. A No New Taxes pledge was at the heart of the bid to generate and maintain public support for the Games, which also had the effect of limiting government involvement on major decisions. 10 The lack 69
70 Tuna Batuhan of public involvement and public funding also meant that implementing comprehensive and integrated planning was limited. The goal of the Olympic transportation plan in Atlanta was to confine activities to a constricted area to shorten travel time between venues. Thus, major venues and events were concentrated within the Olympic Ring circle, a space occupying 3.1 miles (5 km) in diameter in downtown Atlanta. The Olympic Transportation System (OTS) was created to coordinate all transportation systems so as to provide sufficient service. The ACOG voluntarily took responsibility for spectator transportation based on the assumption that Olympic officials could not be moved efficiently if the public movement was not controlled. For ACOG, Atlanta s transportation system prior to the Games was incapable of providing service to millions of people during the Olympics. Based on this argument, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) formulated a plan to use the existing bus and rail systems, as well as put into place a temporary bus system that would operate during the Games only; the temporary bus system included 1475 buses borrowed from more than 65 transit agencies throughout the U.S. 11 Overall, the transit system met MARTA s expectations and delivered about 14.4 million one-way trips, while the supplemental bus system delivered almost 4 million one-way trips during the Olympics. 12 The Legacy of the Atlanta Olympics Atlanta s Olympic efforts were primarily aimed to meet the IOC s requirements in an efficient way, from Games organization to architecture, with limited infrastructure investment. In other words, Atlanta, as a pragmatic and bottom-line-oriented city, reflects the characteristic of the 1990s, a decade of stringency and moderated expectations. 13 An Olympic bid was thought to be the logical next step for Atlanta to grow and to put the city on the world map. The goal of the Atlanta Games was to promote business development, create a world-class city image, and attract international business to the area. After staging the Games, several companies relocated to Atlanta, and the Games was one of the important reasons for achieving this. Although Atlanta prioritized creating a world-class city image instead of creating permanent physical legacies, the city itself and its universities, particularly Georgia Tech and Georgia State University, benefitted from the physical facilities that were built for the Games, including Centennial Olympic Park, Olympic Stadium, the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center, the twelve upgraded pedestrian corridors, the new international concourse, the central atrium at Hartsfield International Airport, and the ITS System. 14 On the other hand, the Olympics left a negative legacy among low-income minority residents and neighborhoods, intensified social problems, and deepened existing divides among residents. For example, the Olympic Stadium construction inflicted further damage on the low-income black neighborhoods in the area, and their limited role in Olympic Planning prevented local governments to take action and protect these people from damage. 15 Politics of the Atlanta Olympics The difficulties that city leaders face within the broader political and economic environment, as well as changes in federal policy and the international economy, force American cities to play an entrepreneurial role with regard to the Olympic Games, viewing the Games as a way to achieve local economic goals. 16 Atlanta s bid for hosting the Olympic Games can be understood as the product of this entrepreneurial growth approach. In Atlanta, the Olympic bid occurred because of the existence of an urban growth regime that aimed to provide a way to overcome the weaknesses of city government
The Politics of Olympic Transportation Planning 71 and benefit local businesses. The basic idea of regime theory is that the political leaders and businesses establish an informal agreement, which consists of a network of well-established connections built on trust between business and political leaders. 17 Both government and business have an interest in local politics, and the urban regime fosters an environment whereby the informal arrangements by which public bodies and private interest function together in order to be able to make and carry out governing decisions. 18 In this sense, for any city, an Olympic bid does not involve all the individuals who may be part of the informal governing structure of a city, but it does illustrate in a concrete fashion how business resources and governmental authority come together to undertake a policy initiative. 19 For Atlanta, the vision and the central motivation among growth elites was to show that Atlanta was a world-class city that was capable of hosting the Olympic Games. The main goal for business leaders was to encourage companies to re/locate their regional and national headquarters and offices to Atlanta, thereby creating a commercial legacy from the Games. The commercially orientated perspective of the planners resulted in a legacy that favored the development of the commercial downtown district rather than neighborhood renewal. Conclusion Many cities from different parts of the world have already hosted the Olympic Games, and each has taken a unique approach to addressing public transportation needs. As a result, the strategies developed for each city have resulted in the application of diverse planning principles. While each of the host cities have used similar strategies, their distinct transportation cultures have resulted in different outcomes. Transportation management is generally a major issue for host cities, and this was especially true in Atlanta. In Atlanta and the outlying areas, individual political power bases created a situation where no other city, town, or county wanted to combine its problems, resources, or efforts with those of Atlanta, and any metro-wide cooperation was seen as a threat to this status quo. 20 Furthermore, Atlanta was largely divided along political and racial lines, which posed additional barriers for achieving metro-wide cooperation and coordination. Within its unique planning environment, the Olympics helped to make the process faster, fostering cooperation and coordination among the different agencies. 21 However, sustaining collaboration was challenging because of the political, cultural, historical, and social boundaries, and it was hard to expect the same motivation and concentration from each authority. Since the emergent problems caused by the Olympics are temporary, it becomes easier to agree on a potentially controversial strategy for each agency or authority, but once the Games are over, disagreements can easily rise again. 22 Many of the changes in the way of thinking and operating do not continue after the Games. Each Olympic host city s experience is unique, and this experience is not necessarily transferable for solving current policy problems of the city. However, it does provide some policy alternatives for the future. Understanding the organizer s agendas and priorities, as well as their decision-making processes, for transportation planning can also provide insight for the future Olympic organizers. The Olympic experience of Atlanta shows that the Games had a limited impact on renovating the host city. Even though the economic and physical benefits of the event were clear, transportation policy culture did not change significantly because of the lack of a comprehensive planning effort and funding. The city focused more on the Olympics-as-sport side and overlooked the needs of communities are disregarded. 23 In sum, focusing primarily on short-term, visual success, rather than a systematic linking of means and ends does not create long-term legacies.
72 Endnotes 1 John Short, Global Metropolitan: Globalizing Cities in a Capitalist World (London: Routledge, 2004); Greg Andranovich, Matthew J. Burbank, and Charles H. Heying, Olympic Cities: Lessons Learned From Mega-Event Politics, Journal of Urban Affairs 23, no. 2 (2001), 113-131. 2 Harry H. Hiller, Post-Event Outcomes and the Post-Modern Turn: The Olympics and Urban Transformations, European Sport Management Quarterly 6, no. 4 (2006), 317-332. 3 Larry Keating, Atlanta: Race, Class, and Urban Expansion (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001) 4 Ibid. 5 Matthew Burbank, Greg Andranovich, and Charles H. Heying, Mega-Events, Urban Development, and Public Policy, The Review of Policy Research 19, no. 3 (2002), 179-202. 6 Ibid. 7 Maurice Roche, Mega-Events and Modernity: Olympics and Expos in the Growth of Global Culture (London: Routledge, 2000). 8 Charles Rutheiser, Imagineering Atlanta: The Politics of Place in the City of Dreams (London: Verso, 1996). 9 Ibid. 10 Steven French and Mike Disher, Atlanta and the Olympics: A One-Year Retrospective, Journal of the American Planning Association, 63, no. 3 (1997), 379-392. 11 The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG), Official Report of the Centennial Olympic Games, Volume One: Planning and Organizing (Atlanta: Peachtree Publishers, 1997); Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA), The Way to the Games: A Report on Mass Transit During the 1996 Summer Olympic Games (Atlanta: MARTA, 1996). 12 ACOG, Official Report of the Centennial Olympic Games. 13 Morris J. Dixon, No Frills, No Thrills: Atlanta's Pragmatic Olympics, Progressive Architecture, 76, no. 7 (1995), 51-104. 14 Jeffrey Humpreys and Michael K. Plummer, 1995 Update: The Economic Impact on the State of Georgia of Hosting the 1996 Olympic Games (A report prepared for the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG), 1995). 15 Keating, Atlanta. 16 Matthew Burbank, Greg Andranovich, and Charles H. Heying, Olympic Dreams: The Impact of Mega-Events on Local Politics (Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001). 17 Ibid. 18 Clarence Stone, Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta, 1946 1988 (Lawrence KA: University of Kansas.Stone, 1989), 76. 19 Burbank et al., Olympic Dreams, 158. 20 Lisa J. Padgett and John R. Oxendine, Economic Development: Seeking Common Ground in: The Olympic Legacy: Building on What Was Achieved (Research Atlanta Inc, 1996), 1-12. 21 Ibid. 22 Genevieve Giuliano, Evaluation of 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics Traffic Management (Department of Civil Engineering and Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Irvine, December 1987). 23 Greg Andranovich, Matthew J. Burbank, and Charles H. Heying, Olympic Cities: Lessons Learned from Mega-Event Politics, Journal of Urban Affairs 23, no. 2 (2001), 113-131.