LONDON’S notoriously unreliable rail network will be put to the test today by members of the International Olympic Committee’s Evaluation Commission when they make the short Tube journey between Stratford and the Millennium Dome at Greenwich.

It will be the only time that the 13-strong IOC team has to use the Underground system while they assess London’s plan for the 2012 Games. Most of the journeys between venues such as Wembley and Lord’s will be made by coach.

The bid team is crossing its fingers that there are no repeats of yesterday’s delays on the Jubilee Line caused by a signal failure at St John’s Wood.

Transport experts, who have spent the past 20 months crafting the transport plan, spent yesterday afternoon trying to convince the IOC members that the road and rail network was sound. One of their biggest selling points was that Tube journeys would be free to Olympic ticketholders.

An interim IOC report last May ranked London last out of the five candidate cities on transport and described the capital’s rail and Underground systems as in need of “considerable investment”. The Olympic consultants also doubted whether London’s forecast of the desired average bus speed was realistic.

The bid team has pointed out that the Olympic Park would be served by ten train lines. Sydney, which hosted what was widely accepted as the best Games, in 2000, had just one line. “We felt we undersold ourselves last year and took real notice of what the IOC said,” Tony McNulty, the Transport Minister, said. “Transport is now in the front seat, no pun.”

Some sports, such as rowing and shooting, have been relocated so that 80 per cent of athletes would now be within 20 minutes of their venue from the Olympic village. Half of the competitors would be able to walk there.

The “ace in the pack” for spectator transport, according to London 2012, is a temporary “javelin” shuttle between Stratford and King’s Cross St Pancras every six minutes, taking seven minutes to complete the journey. The Japanese-style 12-car air-conditioned bullet trains, able to travel at 225kph, would carry up to 250,000 passengers an hour on the Eurostar tracks serving London and Brussels, for four weeks.

Transport for London told the IOC commission that it intended to spend £10 billion over the next five years on an upgrade of the Northern Line and new trains on the Victoria and Jubilee lines. The Olympic transport infrastructure is budgeted to cost £380 million.

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