Lord Coe of Araby

If you go to the airport in Riyadh (you're probably just going to have to trust me on this one), you'll find that there are three passenger terminals: a domestic terminal, an international terminal and....a Royal terminal. That's right: the thousands of princes in the house of Saud, together with their families, have devised what may be the ultimate way of avoiding mixing with their subjects.

This may look pretty extreme, but the fact is that the rich and powerful in every part of the world seem to have a marked aversion to travelling with the masses. Just think of Tony Blair's endless flights on chartered aircraft, Prince Andrew hopping from golf game to hunt weekend on the Queen's Flight, Roman Abramovich with his private 767. Sales of more reasonably-sized private aircraft are at an all-time high, as the super-rich look to by-pass the queues for passport control at Terminal 4.

Well, OK, if that's how they want to spend their money. It doesn't really have any impact on how I travel. But the London Olympic committee is planning to take this segregation a whole lot further. Reports this week suggest that people travelling to the Games in 2012 will be prevented from using their cars. Each ticket will be accompanied by a suggested itinerary using only public transport.

I'm no petrolhead, and in general anything that gets people out of their cars is fine with me. However, while the people who are going to be paying for the Games will be forced to take their chances on public transport, the Olympic organisers and the international bigwigs will be ferried around in a fleet of 3500 specially-purchased vehicles. Moreover, lanes will be closed on major roads all around London so that these worthies don't get delayed as they rush from the caber tossing to the bog snorkelling. These are already being referred to as Zil lanes, after the limousines that were used to ferry Politburo members around Moscow in the last days of the USSR. The lanes will stretch all the way back to Hyde Park -- which is not exactly close to the Olympic venues, and provides a pretty clear hint that not many of the great and good will be staying at a Travelodge in east London for the duration of the Games.

I was amazed when London was awarded the Games and nothing that has happened since has altered my view that this will be one of the biggest boondoggles in British history. Huge amounts of money are going to be spent to stage sports that nobody will want to watch in arenas that may never be used again. Lottery funds are being diverted from good causes in other parts of the UK to defray the costs. Even larger amounts are being spent on providing the necessary transport infrastructure. While this may be a "legacy" of the Games, I can't imagine that anyone taking a dispassionate look at the UK's transport needs would have concluded that we will need ten separate railway lines to Stratford once the circus has moved on.

And now we find that the Olympic organisers are going to disrupt travel around London for several weeks on each side of the Games, but will not themselves be going anywhere near the expensively-provided public transport. Oi, Seb -- take the train, and bring your mates with you!