Boston 2024
You can still see signs of Boston 2024 around the city.
On January 8, 2015, the City of Boston won the right to represent the United States Olympic Committee recommendation hosting city for the 2024 Olympics.
This came a surprise to many as Los Angels seemed to be the favorite city, considering they hosted the summer games before and have the facilities in place.
Not everyone in Boston was happy about being selected as a potential hosting city. About six months later the City requested to be removed from the United States Olympics committee recommendations.
If you look around Boston, you may still see some signs of the push to bring the Olympics to Boston. This sticker was recently spotted on a window on Columbus Ave.
What Happened?
One of the reasons that Boston withdrew from being a hosted city was because of the underestimate of cost to transform the City from an ordinary city to a world-class Olympic hosting city.
Some Key Points
- While the Mayor of Boston gave it a lot of support, the newly elected Massachusetts Governor - Charlie Baker had some doubts about how it would get pulled off.
- The winter of 2015 was brutal on public transportation in the Boston area. The city was hit with record snowfall and caused serious delays for many days. Some experts felt that the MBTA would need to have a serious upgrade in order to host the Olympic Games. A quick fix was not a realistic option.
- An independent audit was requested by the Baker Administration and found that many expenses were underestimated by millions of dollars.
- The public opinion in Boston started to go down once people understood the cost of the project and the magnetite of the change. In six months the public support for the bid went from 51% to only 40%. (wbur poll)