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A quick look at the greener aspects of Vancouver 2010 winter Olympics

Posted on February 26th, 2010 No Comments

I shall make no apology for the Olympics blogs, when it comes to 2012 and London – you’ll thank me for them!

As I may have mentioned… last week I spent a fantastic week in Vancouver looking at the Winter Olympic Games, from a business point of view. This Olympic Games was branded a greener Olympics and the Canadians did exceptionally well, although some may say it was browner rather than greener due to the lack of snow

As a courier service, we are interested in the transportation aspect of the Olympics. Transportation comes in 2 guises – movement of goods and movement of people. In case you didn’t know, the Olympics are the biggest non war related movement of people worldwide. That’s a lot of people to transport.

Transporting people
With over 350,000 people descending into Vancouver, there can be no margin for error. Vancouver has spent a lot of time and money on making the transportation as green as possible. If we were awarding medals, public transport would get a gold. With a newly built Skytrain system collecting people from the airport and transporting them to downtown Vancouver, and then all subway, streetcars, sea buses and buses were free if your were Olympic ticket holders. Traffic in the area is down 30% as people when given the option of driving or using public transport, chose public transport. An important lesson for the London 2012 Games here.

If you decided to cycle you could park your bicycles for free for the duration of the event with the Bicycle Valet company.

The local seaplane company is carbon neutral and free transport via buses was available up to the mountain events too.

Transporting goods
The local courier companies in Vancouver adapted well to the Olympics, many trained up on foot and bicycle couriers to get around any traffic issues, whilst there is less on the roads, there was more congestion with the Torch Relay and Protests.

So far there are no tales of woe like there were at the Atlanta Games, which is a good thing – it means lessons have been learned.

The greener flavour

: Image by janusz l via Flickr

As I mentioned at the top, these Games have had a greener flavour. There are many examples of creatively used items to recycle and reuse. The Olympic and Paralympic Village in Whistler reuses captured methane gas from a former landfill site for energy. The main heat source for the communities is waste heat recovered from the wastewater treatment system.

The roof of the Richmond Oval has been marveled over by many, the wood reclaimed from parasites and instead of being destroyed, it is now a much admired soon to be city treasure.

It’s hard not to be impressed by the efforts made by the Canadians to leave a legacy with a smaller carbon footprint than most.

I hope London 2012 gains inspiration and can deliver the same, if not better .

Sarah

Posted in Sameday Courier

Harness Social Media to Increase Your Sales – Thurrock

Posted on February 25th, 2010 No Comments

Arrow Light Haulage is thrilled to be involved with the social media workshop day in Thurrock, Essex.

We are loaning KTIA and UEL our Communications Director, Sarah Arrow and she will be providing support (as well as being living proof) that social media is useful to small businesses. As you may already know, Sarah is the most followed courier on twitter, she has more followers than DHL, Fedex and UPS combined, proving that you don’t have to be big to be found, you just have to say something interesting!

Sarah tells me that communication is a two way street so she follows people back, something that a lot of social media experts have stopped doing as they have been overwhelmed by Direct Messages from their fans. You can tell what you think on this in the comments below.

If you are a Thurrock based business who wants to join in, please give Richard a call on the number below.

Knowledge Thurrock Innovation Associates (KTIA) in conjunction with Arrow Light Haulage are pleased to offer a free workshop for local businesses entitled “Harness Social Media to Increase Your Sales”. Taking place on the 4th March from 0900 until 1130hrs in Grays, the session is ideal for small enterprise owners and managers who are interested in learning more about online social media platforms and their benefits and how to design a strategy to develop a successful, enhanced and cost-effective online presence.

For more information, please call Richard on 07500 802 311 or email r.a.snell@uel.ac.uk

I wish you a great day Sarah and Richard, I know Thurrock businesses will gain immensely from attending.

Kevin

Posted in Courier Business

From carrying the flames, to the delivery of Olympic Games #van2010

Posted on February 23rd, 2010 No Comments

Those ancient Greeks were wiser than we give them credit for. If they were not fighting each other and having wars over women, then they had a lot of young men full of testosterone on their hands. They needed occupying. Thus the Olympic Games were born, perhaps a little simplistic compared to today’s Olympic movement but then as is now, the Olympics are the greatest non wartime movement of people, worldwide, and they do a tremendous amount for the nations involved.

Olympic Cauldron Vancouver (c) C.Perkins

We watched as the Olympic flame was passed to another person, the streets were awash with people to watch something that nearly 12,000 Canadians had done. The Flame had been carried across Canada, the biggest distance it has travelled in the history of the games – 45,000 kms. That’s the biggest distance in the history of the games, from hand to hand, across water, mountain, prairie. Through ice, rain snow and sunshine, the Olympic flame has been carried by children, men, women, or every age and every race. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger has got in on the act. Transporting the flame is a dream come true for many, and the co-ordination involved in transporting it is immense.

Transportation is the key to the Olympics, from goods to people to equipment and afterward it needs to be returned to it’s owner. We remember Atlanta and some of the transportation issues that they had, so when BT Tradespace told us we had won their trip to the Games we were thrilled, we were going to get a direct look of how transport impacts on delivery businesses in an Olympic city. We now have the edge over many courier businesses, how many of them have actually took time out to see what delivery issues the Olympics in 2012 is likely to have? Remember, the Olympics courier supplier contracts have already been awarded in 2008, the options that are left for us are as subcontractors to the main supplier.

Vancouver is a modern city, built on a grid like system. London is an organic city and is less grid like and more circular. London will not have the advantages that a grid system has. With the grid layout, blocks can be closed off and the traffic easily diverted around the closed areas. A perfect example of this was the day the Olympic torch was carried through the town. A block was closed, crowds formed, the torch procession passed and the crowd dispersed. 20 minutes delay. Repeat at the next block… in London, it would not be possible to do this.

So delivering the games brings new challenges and new solutions to delivering the Olympics in London 2012. Vancouver has been promoting itself as the green Olympics. The public transport system has geared up to meet the challenge with skytrains and the recently finished Canada line to Aberdeen (Aberdeen, Richmond not Aberdeen Scotland).

Vancouver view (c)S.Arrow

Couriers in the city have also adapted, more cycle and on foot couriers to continue carry on delivering vital documents. They have had to think creatively to get around the traffic restrictions. Businesses have closed in the downtown area, so deliveries have had to take place out of hours. The official courier of the games, Purolator has hybrid vehicles in place and sustainable fuel policies (like us) and has done an excellent job so far.

Some businesses have relocated to outside of the City on a temp basis so they can continue to work as usual - this needs to be considered by London businesses for 2012. The home counties can help businesses with this and rehome them on a temporary basis.

The temporary rehoming of businesses needs to take place the weekend before the games open to enable the couriers to move all the goods to their new locations as well as update their schedules and websites with the new locations. I think it’s safe to say, with foresight you can Olympic proof your business and not let it grind to a standstill.

Delivering the games in 2012? London needs to start planning now, it’s not long.

We are up for it and will be encouraging our staff to attend as volunteers and support the games where we can, we may be small but unlike a Juggernaut, we can turn on a dime the Olympics needs flexibilty and creativity, just like it did in Athens all those years ago – some things will never change.

Kevin