Turin's Winter Olympics venues are adorned with billboards and posters declaring the 2006 Games slogan - "Passion lives here".

But it is in a non-descript transport depot in downtown Turin that the "heart" of the Games beats.

In a small, functional office, 30 transport officials are glued to screens monitoring every second of traffic in this bustling industrial city.

No one can move in a car, a bus or a tram without their progress being followed and it is these special "Olympic" monitors who ensure there will no meltdown of Italy's first Winter Games in 50 years.

Long before the first athlete ever arrived, transport had been recognised as the maker or breaker of the games.

The sprawling mass that makes up Turin and the troublesome distances to the ski sites up in the mountains meant a logistical nightmare had to be faced and overcome.

Only hours before the Olympic flame was lit, IOC officials were privately confessing that it was possible some athletes may not make it in time to their event because of the chaos that threatened if the transport system broke down.

Even the Turin Olympic Games Organizing Committee (TOROC) director general Cesare Vaciago admitted on the first day of competition that fears about how well the transport would work were giving him sleepless nights.

And while there have been glitches, some buses arriving late, some not arriving at all, so far no athlete has missed an event.

Drivers have been shipped in from all over Italy, 1,000 of them, and 5,5000 extra runs a day have been added to the normal public transport running to keep the city living as normal a life as possible.

To make everything work, a special extension was added to Turin's transport system to create 5T, a system that 5T president Mario Carrara proudly declares as state-of-the-art.

Recognized as one of the best transport systems by the EC, traffic pace can be altered by changing the speed of traffic lights. Sensors measure how many cars are waiting at a specific junction and computers automatically alter the system to speed things up.

Scores of new street cameras have been added so the 5T control room can monitor conditions.

5T Director Giovanni Foti admits that the weather has been kind to them so far.

"When we have snow that makes things much more difficult," he told AFP.

With snow in the mountains being forecast over the next few days, the transport command system will be monitoring the road gritting trucks.

Every truck has a fitted radio and its progress can be watched in live-time in the control room.

"We know if a lorry is salting the road, we even know the number of the vechicle," explained Foti.

Turin residents are not famous for their displays of outward emotion, which has led to suggestions that the "passion lives here" slogan is not living up to its claim - that perhaps the locals are not all that excited at hosting the Olympics.

On the wall of the 5T control centre is a screen that shows the flow of traffic throughout the day and it confirms that the people in Turin have changed their lifestyle for the games.

"Normally people here are in bed by 11 o'clock in the evening. The traffic monitors show that thousands of people are now not getting home until one o'clock in the morning," said Foti. "They are celebrating."

When the 5T system was created six years ago no one suspected it could be used to prove "Passion lives here".

(China Daily February 17, 2006)