As I mentioned in my last post, the USOC's selection criteria for determining which bid to put forward don't specifically mention two things: venues and cost. So how do the four bids stack up in those areas?

Boston, as I also mentioned, has put forward a "walkable" Games, with most venues within 3.5 miles of the city center. The only event I've seen mentioned as being held outside of Boston is rowing, which is reportedly going up to Lowell to be held on the Merrimack River (the Charles being too twisty and bridge-covered). Still not sure this is the best way to go, but I do think there's a certain logic to a dense Olympics that could allow spectators to walk between venues rather than rely on public transport for all trips.

There's a real focus on using existing venues, and on making any new venues temporary (or in some cases, convertible to office/retail/residential space). The big question is where an Olympic stadium will go. I tended to think the site of Suffolk Downs would make sense - it's on Route 1A and the Blue Line - but there's more talk now about the site of the New Boston Food Market. It's located right next to the Southeast Expressway and rail lines from South Station, which seems ideal (though the Expressway traffic is always problematic), but to get the parcel the city would likely need to take it by eminent domain. Warm up your lawyers.

As far as costs go, $7.5 billion gets bandied about quite a bit, but depending on how you count things it could go as high as $20 billion. A fairer number is probably somewhere in the middle - for now - as the high estimate includes projects in a $13 billion transportation bill that will happen regardless of how the Olympics go.

Washington has a more spread out plan if these map views are anything to go by, though it's more compact than earlier plans that saw venues spread out from Baltimore to Richmond. It looks like there will be more new building in this plan than in Boston's, unsure if the Olympic Stadium plan would renovate or raze RFK Stadium. The Olympic Village is also slated to go in an area whose most notable facility is apparently a homeless shelter. Not sure how well that will go over.

I didn't find a lot of cost projections, but it looks like they're aiming at a similar operating budget to Boston and what was spent in London. It's the additional costs that can cause the budget to bloat, which is especially concerning for Washington given that much of their governance is done by Congress rather than local officials. Good luck squeezing an extra billion out of a House committee chaired by some guy from Idaho.

Los Angeles will put the LA Coliseum back to use as their Olympic Stadium, which makes sense. Venues will be placed into four clusters, two in what I consider LA proper, one in Carson, and one in Long Beach. A walkable Games this is not, though organizers have a stated goal of having 80 percent of spectators get to venues by public transportation. It's not clear to me how many new venues are needed, but many of the ones listed in a venue map (that may have come out prematurely) seem to already exist.

Same story on costs as with the other bids, and I'm finding no estimates of costs beyond the operating budget. Given the emphasis on extending a couple of transit lines, I'm thinking the costs here may be significant.

San Francisco also seems to be taking more of a regional approach, looking at using existing facilities in San Jose, Santa Clara and Berkeley. There's also a potential $2 billion stadium deal for Oakland that could be included, but there are apparently significant challenges to that project as well. There's also talk of a temporary Olympic stadium like Boston's, and using existing venues or building temporary ones in the city (beach volleyball in front of city hall, for example).

Costs - should I even bother? Just like everyone else, as far as we know.

 It's probably a fool's errand to try to compare these bids at this stage, when so much is unknown. But from what is out there, I do think the Boston bid is the most walkable, and perhaps the one that does the best job of using existing venues (or of not talking about what will need to be built, temporary or not). It also appears to be the bid that's the most up-front about costs outside of the operating budget, for better or worse (living in the Boston area may also may be making more aware of Boston's details). I'm most concerned over Washington's bid, between the specter of Congressional involvement and the likely backlash of clearing out the homeless to build an athlete's village.