UK panel criticises London Olympics transport

LONDON, Feb 20 (Reuters) Plans for transport links to the 2012 London Olympics are vague and the agency in charge has shown no urgency in drawing up a more detailed blueprint, a British parliamentary committee said today.

The criticism from Parliament's Transport Committee follows pressure on London Games organisers to clarify the budget for staging the event and concern over spiralling costs.

The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), set up to oversee the building of new venues and infrastructure for the London Olympics, published a draft transport plan last October and expects to produce a final plan this summer, the committee said.

''We are concerned to see that the plans for delivery (of most forms of transport) remain vague, and the ODA is not exhibiting any sense of urgency about producing more detailed plans,'' it said in a report.

Contingency plans for major systems failures during the Games -- such as power failures, security alerts or signalling problems -- were little developed.

Transport plans for the London Olympics depend heavily on rail, with 80 percent of spectators and workers expected to travel by train, it said.

''It is crucial that the transport systems put into place are robust enough to allow for major failures in parts of the system without the entire system collapsing,'' the report said.

WORLD CLASS The ODA's director of transport Hugh Sumner played down the concern, saying it was unprecedented to have the Transport Plan ready six years before the Games.

''We have hit every one of our milestones to date,'' he said in a statement.

''We are not complacent, of course there will be challenges ahead, but we have no doubt we will deliver a world class transport system for the Games.'' The statement said that 17 billion pounds will be invested into London's transport system over the next five years, much of it specifically targeted on east London where the bulk of the Games will be taking place.

''There are contingency plans for every mode of transport,'' an ODA spokesman added.

''There is a detailed plan with Transport for London and the emergency services and will be in the transport plan which will be finalised later this year.'' The committee's report also criticised the ODA's assumption that London car traffic would fall by eight percent during the 2012 Games due to the summer holidays and by a further eight percent as people leave London because of the Olympics.

It said the figures were highly speculative and posed a ''significant risk'' to the Olympics transport plan.

However the ODA said the figures were purely ''evidence-based'' on previous Games and London's current transport patterns.

Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell said last year the budget for building the infrastructure had risen by 900 million pounds (1.76 billion dollar) to 3.3 billion pounds, but some media reports now put the cost at nine billion.

REUTERS SAM RN2119