lol not that important. Atlanta's public transport is not that great and they had the games there. I used to live in Atlanta, so don't tell me MARTA is great. It's not.
in 1996, MARTA wasn't extensive enough to matter in terms of truly connecting Olympic venues any more so than MetroRail is today. in fact...the beauty of Houston's bid was that it was so compact in nature. So many events and facilities right along that rail line. But if we're talking about 2024, then you have to consider that all the additional rail lines will be completed by then.
No go: Weather. (And it won't get any better in the future.) It's one thing to get fat East Texas boys to do two-a-days, but asking elite level athletes to perform in the heat/humidity combo that is Houston is a non-starter.
East end line, north line, and southeast line just go into various low income residential neighborhoods. The two lines that matter, University and Uptown, and shelved indefinitely. Funny how poor people don't complain when good public transit comes their way, but rich do.
The line to TSU/UH is still on, right? That's the only that matters with respect to connecting facilities that isn't already built. My guess is if you got a green light on the Olympics, you'd be getting a green light on a ton of rail development. That's the story of the development of MARTA, honestly. The benefit to the community of getting to host the Olympics is the infrastructure they build that lasts for decades after because they're hosting a 2-week event.
Southeast has a stop at UH. I agree with the last part, Athens as well as many other cities get great infrastructure as a result of olympics coming.
If Atlanta can get it, surely Houston. But I'd actually think we'd have a better shot if the whole state pulled together. I've mentioned it before, but Austin, SA, Dallas, Houston each bring their Texas style to the plate, and are all within spitting distance. Put on something truly unique... Houston/Dallas each hosting a closing an opening, then split the events up among the different areas. So you don't have one true host city but several, with each their own little olympic village.
I'd like to see sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East get it at least once over the next few times; but, yeah, it's good for the city and we definitely have both the space and the cash.
The problem is that's not compact enough. they're not interested in something that spread out. The strength of the Houston bid was that it was more compact (in terms of proximity of venues) than any other in the States. Ironic when you consider how spread out we are otherwise. The biggest weakness in Dallas bid was that it was ridiculously spread out..to the point where some events would have been in Oklahoma. Olympic Committee isn't interested in picking cities where the events are that far spread out.
Why should we host it? Just so that we can spend a bunch of money, say it was here and then own a bunch of facilities that no one cares about or uses? Is Atlanta better off having hosted the Olympics? I don't think so- it didn't raise it to the level of NY, SF, LA, etc. It's just another city that happens to have Olympic Park in it. It'd be cool for us to say that we hosted the Olympics, but I just think that it would be a lot of work and money for 2 weeks of hell that will annoy all the locals. You'd probably have to make an appointment to shop at the Galleria for that stretch. Lol
