FROM TICKETS TO TRANSPORT: HOW READY IS TOKYO?

Ticket sales

Tokyo 2020 organisers have used a staggered system, with first priority given to those within Japan before a secondary sale overseas.

Japanese residents were able to take part in a lottery system, with more than 7.5 million people registering. The first phase of ticket allocations was announced in June with 3.2 million sold. Overseas tickets are sold via authorised sellers. People in Britain looking to purchase tickets must do so via the Team GB Live website.

Venues

The core focus of activity will take place in the Tokyo Bay zone, featuring a number of new venues built for these Olympics, largely on unused brownfield sites, and the neighbouring Heritage Zone, which reuses facilities from the 1964 Olympics. The Athletes’ Village sits at the point the zones intersect.

The new 68,000seat Olympic Stadium has been built on the same footprint as the previous National Stadium, the focal point in 1964. The new venue is on track to be completed by November, ahead of test events. Unlike at London 2012, there is no centralised Olympic Park.

Events will also take place outside Tokyo, with cycling and surfing some distance away. Football matches will be held across Japan. Of the 43 venues to be used, eight are new, 25 existing and 10 temporary. More than half of the new venues are complete, with only the aquatics centre construction due to run into next year.

Transport

As Tokyo is already one of the busiest cities in the world, there is some concern about how a strained transport system will cope with the addition of hundreds of thousands of people for the Olympics. The organisers’ answer is simple: ask local people to stop travelling at key times.

Dedicated Games lanes are unlikely to be employed; instead, organisers will ask people to avoid driving at rush hours and businesses to conduct deliveries at night.

Public support

Support for Tokyo 2020 seems to be strong if judged purely by the number of people who have applied to play a role or attend.

More than 200,000 people applied to fill the 110,000 volunteer places at the Olympics and Paralympics, while ticket applications were so popular that the deadline had to be extended by 12 hours. As often happens with hosting major events, the overspend has gone into many billions, which has lessened mass support across the country. There have also been reports of violations of human rights among workers at some of the new venues being built.

Innovations

Robotics will be used extensively, even in the mascots (above), while electric golf carts will ferry people to venues and facial recognition will be used for media and workers.

To mitigate the heat, the marathons will begin at 6am and the route has been painted with a substance which organisers claim reduces the road surface temperature and therefore air temperature above it by up to eight degrees.

There has been an emphasis on sustainability, with more than six million old mobile phones and electronic devices collected – from which the 5,000 Olympic and Paralympic medals will be produced. The podiums will be made from recycled waste.