TOD not TAD - Creating Great Places for People in New Lynn

Abstract Remit

Increasingly, major sporting events are looking to walking as the main mode of access to venues and as a link to public transport. Good pedestrian planning can have a signficant impact on the success and public experience of a sporting event.

Significant effort and expense goes into building infrastructure to accommodate pedestrians; however, this is often done with little thought for the pedestrians themselves. This presentation will present two case studies from the London 2012 Olympic Games and the New Zealand Rugby World Cup to demonstrate the value of detailed pedestrian planning and modelling in the organisation of large sporting events.

The London Olympics is taking place concurrently in over 20 venues within London and the UK . This poses a major logistical challenge from a public transport perspective, however it also requires a cohesive pedestrian management strategy as most of the venues are temporary, being constructed solely for the games. Beca has been commissioned to develop crowd management strategies for all of the temporary venues. This presentation will cover crowd management at the Olympics from a number of different angles:

-The interface between transport hubs and the event venues
-The conflicts between large crowds and other pedestrians, local residents and businesses
-The management  of large crowds from a safety and security perspective
-The cost effective design of pedestrian infrastructure for the Games
-The movement of crowds outside and within the venues
-Some of the constraints and expectations assessed using modelling tools

A key feature of this presentation will be an overview of the modelling and analysis techniques being developed to inform these strategies.

The presentation will then demonstrate how these techniques are currently being applied in preparation for the New Zealand Rugby World Cup. As the country prepares to host the world's third largest international sporting event, planning how people will move around key venues will be a critical stage in the process of ensuring that the World Cup is a great success.

Author Profile  

Alan Kerr is a Senior Transport Planner with Beca Infrastructure. He has a broad range of public and private sector transport planning experience. His particular expertise is in public transport station and interchange planning and the interaction between public transport stations and other modes of transport. His is also experienced in many broader transport planning areas such as crowd flow modelling, demand forecasting and modelling, congestion charging appraisal, economic analysis, accessibility and mobility planning, development planning and journey time variability research.