Key issue will be traffic

AIR AND ROAD SYSTEMS NEED ORGANIZING

By Linda B. Blackford

LBLACKFORD@HERALD-LEADER.COM

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The dynamite has started clearing the way for a $40 million indoor arena at the Kentucky Horse Park.

Construction crews are widening Newtown Pike and prettying it up with a new stone wall.

Over at the World Games Foundation office, meetings run non-stop, while down at City Hall, officials contemplate how to improve downtown.

"It is exhilarating," Horse Park director John Nicholson says of all the preparations for the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games in Lexington. "It is on time, and it is happening with the proper sense of urgency."

The year 2010 might seem a long time away, but for an event as big as the World Games, a sense of urgency is probably necessary three years out.

Because this is the first time the World Games will be in the United States, there are extra levels of expectation, nervousness and challenge.

For example, the Kentucky Horse Park is much farther from Lexington's city center than was the case in Aachen, Germany, or Jerez, Spain -- sites of the last two World Games. That could pose more problems with getting people back and forth. Hotels are spread all over Lexington, meaning more shuttle buses from every direction to the Horse Park and another set of buses to get people from their hotels to downtown.

Many Americans, including Lexingtonians, are much less at ease with public transportation systems than Europeans, partly because they tend to be less efficient in the larger, spread-out U.S. urban spaces than in their compact European counterparts.

"What Lexington has is space, lots of it," said Werner Schlosser, director of the Aachen Tourist Service who traveled to Lexington after it won the 2010 bid. "Other things, like getting people into the city, may be harder to do."

Getting to events

European cities have well-oiled, well-used public transportation systems. In the United States, and in Lexington, people are much more attuned to their cars. However, because of the volume of people expected to come to the World Games, cars will be out; buses, in.

"What we have to do is get people conveniently, safely and easily to their destination without everyone being in their cars," said Mary Wathen, the city's liaison to the World Games Foundation board.

That means shuttle buses, lots of them, between hotels and the Horse Park, between hotels and downtown, between downtown and the Horse Park. There have been discussions about closing Newtown and Ironworks Pikes to nothing but bus traffic during the Games.

In Aachen and Jerez, people use public buses every day because it is difficult to find parking, and gas is much more expensive than in the United States. For the Games, both cities organized shuttle services between the city centers and the Games' venues. In Aachen, shuttle buses also went back and forth directly from city hotels.

Lextran doesn't have much in the way of plans for the event yet, though spokesman David Riggins says it will be a challenge to accommodate current service and double that with visitors.

"It's too early to say; everything is so preliminary so we don't have anything solid," Riggins said. LexTran might borrow extra buses, and its leadership has had some meetings about the World Games. But "right now we don't have much to say," Riggins said.

LexTran already faces plenty of challenges without the World Games. The long-beleaguered system has been buoyed by a dedicated tax to help its coffers, but it's still trying to rebuild ridership. This week, leaders did take steps to possibly bring trolleys back to downtown routes in time for the World Games.

Jack Kelly, director of the World Games Foundation, knows that the distance between downtown and the games site is much farther than at the past two Games, but bristles at the idea that transportation will be a challenge.

"Why would anyone assume we wouldn't have good transportation here?" Kelly asked.

He said that meetings are already being held with city and state officials because very, very few cars will be allowed at the Horse Park, none at all belonging to the general public. People will have to park at places like Coldstream or Fasig Tipton and ride buses to the site. As in Aachen and Jerez, there will also be shuttles from downtown and from some hotels. Kelly said the system will have to work efficiently, or spectators and foreign journalists will grumble before they even get to the Games.