Predictions that Rio 2016 would be known as the “Traffic Olympics” are dead on, at least in the days leading up to the opening ceremony.
Two trips Monday -- confined totally to the suburban Barra Da Tujica cluster of Games activity -- took more than 45 minutes each, not counting time waiting for a ride. I haven’t even dared travel into the urban center of the Maracana and Copacabana clusters. Unless things change by Friday, and they might, very little will get done quickly this August.
Complicating things, Rio’s corps of private drivers don’t seem to be on the same page as Rio 2016 and city planners. On Monday, two Uber drivers promised me they would arrive in three minutes, only to realize they were on the wrong side of a closed, heavily guarded intersection that would take 20 minutes to work around. Then, a taxi cab took me about eight miles out of my way because three road closures near the Olympic Park took him by surprise. (I saw a beautiful white sandy beach on that trip, but unfortunately kept USOC CEO Scott Blackmun waiting 15 minutes.)
Furthermore, the dedicated system of media buses is poorly marked at the main venues and often not marked at all away from the venues. Nobody wants to hear a reporter whine, but the Olympics prides itself on making life easy on the people who tell their story to the world, and veteran reporters tell me this is not typical.
On its best day, Rio is a hard city to navigate. Its spectacular mountains and the ocean don’t leave a lot of room for highways, and the Games are organized around two extreme points in the sprawling city. My wife’s 27-mile trip from the CoSport ticket will call in the Botafogo neighborhood back to our hotel -- a trip clearly conceived by Rio planners to be a fairly common part of the Olympic experience -- took more than two hours.
Things could get better. The city’s new metro line 4 is up and running for Olympic credential holders, and by Friday, for any Olympic ticket holders. The rush of incoming tourists this week may subside as the Games get started. But when you’re facing bumper-to-bumper ordeals even in the neighborhood, days before the Games even start, it’s not a good sign.
