Organisers of next year’s Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo are reported to be struggling to find enough large buses and drivers to transport athletes and related individuals.
Since venues of the Tokyo 2020 Games are dispersed across the capital, officials an enormous number of buses would be necessary.
“Transportation will determine the success of the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics,” said a Tokyo 2020 official told Japanese news service Kyodo News.
Tokyo 2020 believed it needs 2,000 buses a day for the arenas around the city, and at least twice that number of drivers.
They have requested cooperation from approximately 600 bus operators in Tokyo and its surrounding prefectures.
But difficulties over demand have been exacerbated by the fact that summer is already a time of high demand for the city’s bus companies.
“Even in a typical year we reach 80 percent of our rate of operation,” an official at an association of bus companies in and around Tokyo told Kyodo News.
There are only 1,400 coaches in Tokyo or 5,000 in the area if the six nearby prefectures are included.