Olympic construction projects have turned Rio upside down, but a harsh economy and some major failures are overshadowing organizers' hopes of emulating Barcelona's Olympian transformation back in 1992. So how do Rio's legacy promises stack up? When the Olympic flame goes out at the end of the Games on August 21, Rio will have a public transport system serving 66 percent of the population, against 38 percent now. Officials say the new metro line will carry 300,000 people a day and take 2,000 cars an hour off the roads. The metro is also linked to a new 72-mile system of express buses in dedicated lanes, with each bus estimated to remove the need for 126 private cars.
The networks are impressive but critics say the metro extension serves richer, already relatively well-connected neighborhoods, while transport in the poor majority of Rio remains patchy. The mayor promises no repeat of the embarrassing aftermath of Brazil's 2014 hosting of the World Cup, where money was poured into building stadiums that no one needed. The handball arena will be dismantled and rebuilt into four public schools, while the Olympic aquatic sports center will become two swimming centers. Other installations are scheduled to remain as they are, but with new uses. The mayor's office says that one of the gymnasiums will become an experimental sports school, while another will become a high-level training center. The Deodoro park, one of the big hubs during the Games, will be opened to the public, benefiting one of Rio's poorest areas. The most glaring letdown has been the failure to clean Guanabara Bay, the beautiful natural harbor where the sailing and windsurfing will take place.
Guanabara has been polluted by decades of failure to build proper sewage systems in Rio. A boom in oil industry facilities added to the problem. Initially the government promised to get 80 percent of sewage entering the bay treated, but quietly abandoned the goal. Failed projects over the years are estimated to have cost $2.5 billion.
Barcelona hosted the 1992 Games and put 80 percent of its budget into urban improvement. Tourism numbers shot up from 1.7 million in 1991 to 7.9 million in 2014. In Rio, the current number of tourists each year is about 1.5 million and the share of Olympic investment dedicated to urban improvement is 64 percent. With an Olympic budget of approximately $9.5 billion, the city hopes to see a similar boost in fortunes.
But Rio's slum neighborhoods, known as favelas, remain desperately poor and violent -- no-go areas for tourists and even sometimes police. And as if the national nine percent rate of unemployment was not bad enough, a huge question mark now hangs over the fate of the 30,000 people employed in pre-Olympic construction.
